Joshua Abrams’ piece for two violas, harmonium and electronics – written in dialogue with Lisa Alvarado’s 2023 REDCAT exhibition – sonically considers her matrix of geographic, geologic and personal histories. On its own, the LP ensures that the exhibit’s expansive ambiance persists, via Alvarado’s graphics and the music’s mesmerizing stream of subtle sonics and polarities, spiraling in and out of change and recurrence on multiple planes.
Joshua Abrams’ Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation is the aural manifestation of an art event described as “an in-between space and access point to a pulsating experience that connects body and land.” Like the action of a slow-spiraling coil, the music information here revolves in dappling light, an evolution drawn slowly, magnetically forward, resonating there and back again. Deep-reaching in elemental movement, it leaves traces and echoes in the air — and in our ears, as our own experience evolves.
Joshua originally created this music as a 4 channel installation to accompany Lisa Alvarado's Pulse Meridian Foliation exhibition at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles. Written for two violas (both played by James Sanders), harmonium (Lisa), & electronics (Joshua), it was designed to play on a loop throughout the gallery's open hours between April 1 and August 20, 2023. And it did.
When playing with Natural Information Society, Joshua’s writing is directed toward the form of the music as uniquely occupied by the group. Here, he wrote in strict dialogue with the exhibit, responding with choices in composition, performance and production on Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation. A key interpretation of the exhibition is voiced by Josh in the hand-off of information between the two violas as they weave together from oppositional points across the sound stage.
In mixing the original surround sound down to two channels, Joshua worked toward the small details from left to right, placing former residents of triangulated speaker planes in a congenial spot on our present stereo azimuth — realizing, in the careful growth of this auricular border ecosystem, an essential aspect of the Pulse Meridian Foliation exhibit.
Daniela Lieja Quintanar, REDCAT Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Programs, on Pulse Meridian Foliation:
A threshold composed of a new immersive mural, a collection of double-sided paintings, a series of photos, and a sound installation. The exhibition explores how memory can be transformed through the body’s relationship to geography and geology, as well as engaging with Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of Nepantla (in-between): "the midway point between the conscious and the unconscious, the place where transformations are enacted."
In her exhibit, Pulse Meridian Foliation, Lisa Alvarado inhabits the process of foliation, in which extreme environmental pressures upon rocks evoke a new crystallization and a changed minerality. For Alvarado personally, this is a matrix through which she can consider time and changes, specifically the politics of change, and dialogues that multiply over distinct chapters of history. A way to view her family’s intergenerational memory of “Mexican Repatriation”, a 1930s US policy that pushed millions across the border into Mexico, including many U.S. citizens.
The weight of these things shudders through the bones of the music here slowly, almost incalculably. Details come and go, light and shadow flickers as horizontal and vertical planes gently intersect… an ambient space in constant change. Constant MINIMAL change, with the recurrent events and slight returns cascading in slo-mo arcs all around.
On Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation, Lisa Alvarado asks, “How does memory transform and live within the body?” and, in collaboration with Joshua Abrams, a transformation is enacted.
