Romi Ron Morrison – Song Book : Quotient of Desire

Romi Ron Morrison and friends present a special live performance building on Morrison’s Kitchen residency in New York, where they developed Song Book: Quotient of Desire.

Presented in partnership with the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Mythscience, and 2220 Arts & Archives and organized in conjunction with the exhibition Too Fast To Sing, curated by Hugo Cervantes.

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Both a publication and a series of graphic scores, Song Book probes the life and music of Julius Eastman, the radical composer whose embrace of Blackness and queer desire transformed experimental music. The project also investigates how Eastman’s life collides with early predictive computing technologies pioneered by the RAND Corpin the late 1960s and 1970s, resulting in significant housing loss in New York City. Morrison situates these systems in relation to Eastman’s own experiences of homelessness in New York during the same era, examining how data infrastructures shape and surveil precarious communities in addition to creating graphic scores inspired by the Eastman’s contingent networks for living, driven by desire.

At The Kitchen, Morrison activated Song Book through live performance, inviting musicians to interpret one of their graphic scores in real time. This Los Angeles presentation restages work with L.A.-based musicians – to be announced at a later date – bringing the project into the city where predictive policing first emerged. The performance amplifies the book’s central inquiries into displacement, surveillance, desire, and contingent living, while inviting new sonic interpretations rooted in local histories.

This is a 21+ event