First up on Saturday, July 13 from 5:00–9:00pm is Ever Present: Cosmos, inspired by the exhibition The Wondrous Cosmos in Medieval Manuscripts. This program brings together a group of artists who integrate the intergalactic into their varied work. Like their medieval forbearers, they quest for new artistic, analytic, and spiritual ways of understanding our connection to the cosmos. Performances include music by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and Vedic astrologer Deradoorian, choral scores translated from the constellations by experimental artist and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, and interdimensional rituals by A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S with live music accompaniment by ambient composer Ana Roxanne, a planetarium-style visual lecture on the multiverse by artist Jennifer Moon & laub, and site-wide energy work by multidimensional artist and Afrofuturist Jordi.
On Sunday, July 28 from 6:00–9:00pm, Ever Present features Colin Self, Mandy Kahn, and Ben Babbitt. As guests arrive via the tram, they will be welcomed by Colin Self and his classical string trio. Mandy Kahn will be presenting immersive poetry, and a sound installation by composer Ben Babbitt will take place in the Central Garden.
For this Sunday event, New York and Berlin-based composer and artist Colin Self—known for combining voice, body, and digital technologies to explore gender, communication, and our relationships to the biological and the technological—performs on the Tram Arrival Plaza. L.A. native Mandy Kahn is a noted poet and librettist who also collaborates with composers on inventive new works, such as Yuval Sharon’s celebrated opera Hopscotch. She will present a selection of immersive pieces that interact with the architecture of the Getty’s courtyards and feature a cast of singers and performers. Composer Ben Babbitt, known for work with Weyes Blood, Angel Olsen, and How to Dress Well, creates a multi-channel sound installation for Robert Irwin’s Central Garden, with live singers and a quadraphonic ambient soundtrack.
Finally, save-the-date of Saturday, September 7 as Ever Present teams up with Brooklyn-based record label Sacred Bones and online curiosities' guidebook Atlas Obscura for a celebration of Mort Garson’s Plantasia. The recently reissued, pioneering 1970s electronic album composed for plants and the people who love them will serenade the blooms and bushes of Robert Irwin’s Central Garden—a custom listening experience of this groundbreaking album as it was meant to be heard: surrounded by lush vegetation. The Central Garden will be lined with speakers streaming music, with additional programming celebrating plants as both muse and material in the arts. Additional programming and event times to be announced.
Ever Present is a series that invites artistic experimenters to stage ephemeral performances amid the permanent collections, architecture, and gardens of the Getty museum. Taking its name from the words of Robert Irwin at the foot of the Getty’s Central Garden (Ever present / Never twice the same / Ever changing / Never less than whole), the series takes Irwin’s words as an invitation to explore concepts of temporality and permanence through the work of musicians, artists, dancers, and other cultural vanguards. Featuring innovative and irreverent experiences, Ever Present aims to question the link between what lives and what lasts.
Always free and open-ended, Ever Present occurs throughout the year. Parking at the Getty Center is $20 and is reduced to $15 after 3:00pm and $10 after 6:00pm