Barry Hessenius: GIA Conference Monday Report

The first day of any of our art conferences seem to always be the longest. Janet Brown opened the conference with the reminder that the three operating principles of GIA continue to be: Inclusiveness, Collaboration, and Curiosity. Recent GIA Conferences have featured Idea Lab — short Ted like presentations by a trio of different working artists. The first three were all excellent. The one that caught my attention was Yuval Sharon, founder and artistic director of The Industry, an L.A. based experimental opera company that produces performances that can only be categorized as way outside the box. He touted three

:

• A warehouse based production where the audience was invited to walk all around the actual production and view it from anywhere they choose — in front as an audience, backstage, from the wings.
• A production of a full opera at L.A’s downtown Union Station – a working railroad station with arrivals and departures and teeming with travelers.
• And most ambitious of all — an opera performed in 24 moving vehicles on L.A.’s freeway system called “Hopscotch“. Really, the opera is performed in chapters and people get in these cars / vans for ten minutes at a time. And then can opt for another chapter. Each moving vehicle travels to different parts of the city. Moreover, the “chapters” are live streamed. L.A. has long had a car culture, and this project fits perfectly into the identity of the city.

This is clearly not your father’s opera company.