AKOMA

Join music curator Amadeus Julian Regucera for a pre-concert conversation with artists Jlin and Florence To in Studio 2. Café open after the pre-show, and during the preview concert.

Akoma is the latest project and album by acclaimed electronic musician Jlin. In close collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Florence To, she will be in residence at EMPAC to develop and present a work-in-progress performance. Akoma incites a dynamic and rhythmic conversation in which sound and light can create a resonance that absorbs and emanates energy into a shared space.

Influenced by “footwork,” a genre of post-house music from Chicago and typified by an athletic and hyperactive rhythmic drive, Jlin developed her complex and personal style of music in her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Exemplified on past albums such as Perspective, Black Origami, and her acclaimed 2015 debut Dark Energy, Jlin’s compositional style combines the physicality of footwork with tectonic, polyrhythmic textures and excitedly unpredictable sound worlds.

For this project, To will develop an interactive landscape that responds to Jlin’s music, utilizing various tools for outputting video and lighting design onto a variety of projection surfaces and lighting rigs. Performing together onstage In EMPAC’s Studio 1, Jlin and To will experiment with digital visual surfaces for displaying To’s highly interactive visual work alongside Jlin’s singular compositions.

Akoma album cover. Artwork: Florence To.