Invocations workship at Orto Botanico di Palermo in Italy
We love when Francesca Heart comes to Los Angeles!! This is the first of two moments that we’ll share while Francesca is in town to celebrate her Grammy-nomination as part of the Saul Williams Meets Carlos Niño & Friends ensemble that we presented in December of ‘24.
Francesca Heart’s Invocations workshop is a small group project and part of her ongoing research practice on sound mythologies, hydrofeminism and collective becoming. Ignited by the thinking of choreographer Emilie Conrad, according to whom all living processes originate in the movement of water, this three hour workshop invites participants to create an instant sound photography of the landscape co-produced by their bodies.
Throughout the afternoon we’ll chat field recording, the acoustic ecology of Los Angeles, and utilize accessible amateur recording technology. The project encourages shared, collective vulnerability, in order to create new myths and narratives that explore oceanic imaginaries, renewal and belonging, and ecological sensitivity.
‘Invocations’ has been presented at La Terra delle Sirene (Terraforma, Villa Lontana, Marea Art Project, Biennale Architettura / Museo Madre Napoli IT), Palermo Botanical Garden (Room to Bloom, studio rizoma Palermo IT), Iklectik (London, UK), Les Urbaines Festival (Lausanne, CH), Nextones (Val d’Ossola, IT), UCSB (USA) & more
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We’ll share our gathering location the week of, but as of now are planning to meet somewhere along or near Ballona Creek as it flows through either Marina del Rey or Playa del Rey.
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Francesca Mariano (also known as Francesca Heart and Serpentine Dance) is a grammy-nominated artist working across sound, movement, installation, and somatic research. With volcanic and marine roots in Southern Italy, her practice emerges at as an interdisciplinary research on hydrofeminism, mythological acoustics, and landscape choreology. Her acclaimed albums Eurybia and Sphinx Nouvelle are released by US pioneering label Leaving Records and have received praise from Pitchfork, Vogue Italia, Bandcamp Daily, and others for their visionary fusion of ambient, ceremonial, and electronic forms.
She investigates how bodies- human, more-than-human, geological- carry memory, myth, and transformation. Her work is driven by the belief that listening is a radical tool for reconfiguring our relationship with the earth and the cosmos. Through choreographic scores, sonic explorations, and performative installations, she mainly focuses on the Mediterranean as a resonant body, a space of stratified histories and post-human futures. Her approach to music is at once playful and research-focused, with a passion for cinematic textures inspired by 80s and 90s film composers such as Eric Serra, and 2000s’ video game sounds she used to play as a child with her brother.
