August 17, 2018
Friday Flights
Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Performance artist and musician Tyler Matthew Oyer performs RELEASE DELUXE, his debut music project that toys with ideas of fantasy, nostalgia, and magical spells in order to conjure defenses against society’s oppressions. Hovering between the actual and the symbolic, Oyer draws on research that spans from pop divas to American political history.
The performance starts with a myth: In 1980, a series of spells were embedded within the sound waves of a number of popular songs. These spells were engineered to enter the minds of listeners and dismantle the white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal pathologies that characterize American domination and oppression. Within hours, the CIA and NASA unleashed a counter spell that contained the sound waves in wind, rain, snow, and dust storms, disabling their power to enact change. RELEASE DELUXE tells this story, searches for the missing spells, and seeks to conjure new spells for a different tomorrow.
RELEASE DELUXE features original collaborations with Bendik Giske, Max Boss, Julia Giertz, Kelman Duran, Ingmar Carlson, Kembra Pfahler, Lex Brown, Anders Rhedin, Nightfeelings, Ben Babbitt, Nedalot, Busy Gangnes, Syk Tariq, COMBAT!, and Princess Century.
