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You are here: Home / LACE / 2020-Current Year / APOLAKI: Film Screening and Artist Talk

APOLAKI: Film Screening and Artist Talk

Sunday December 10, 2023 | 2-5 pm
Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Limited free parking available on site
Free admission – RSVP to rsvp@welcometolace.org

Join LACE and Micaela Tobin (White Boy Scream) for a special screening of APOLAKI: OPERA OF THE SCORCHED EARTH. Following the screening, Micaela will host an artist talk with artists and collaborators Jay Carlon, Carlo Maghirang, and the Liyang Network. Light refreshments will be provided.

ABOUT APOLAKI: OPERA OF THE SCORCHED EARTH

APOLAKI: OPERA OF THE SCORCHED EARTH is a new experimental opera by Filipino-American composer Micaela Tobin in collaboration with installation designer Carlo Maghirang and dancer/choreographer Jay Carlon. Continuing her celebration of the pre-colonial mythologies of the Philippines, Tobin’s new work tells the story of Apolaki, the precolonial God of Sun and War, who finds themself lost in a foreign and unfamiliar land (present day Tongva Land/Los Angeles) after being displaced from the Philippines by Spanish colonizers. This opera is a radical meditation on the complex relationships between settler colonialism, migration, and diaspora, and invites the audience to join Apolaki in this immersive pilgrimage, premiering at the historic and storied Zorthian Ranch overlooking the Los Angeles Basin.

Learn more about APOLAKI: OPERA OF THE SCORCHED EARTH here.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Micaela Tobin is a soprano, sound artist, and teacher based in Los Angeles, CA who specializes in experimental voice and contemporary opera.

As a sound artist with a background in opera, Micaela integrates voice and electronics within the genres of noise and drone music. Her work incorporates ritualized gesture and amplified object-symbolism and explores her diasporic identity as a first-generation Filipina-American. Micaela’s vocal practice is based in building connections between the physical voice as a means of empowering one’s ‘inner’ voice and challenging colonial stories and systems. 

Composing primarily under the moniker “White Boy Scream,” Micaela dissects her operatic and extended vocal techniques through the use of electronics, oscillating between extreme textures of noise, drone, and operatic sound walls. Her most recent full length album, “BAKUNAWA” (Deathbomb Arc) includes elements of sonic ritual, ancient myth, and ancestral memory. Of the album, Steve Smith of The New Yorker Magazine asserts that “opera would do well to pay attention.” The album was ranked #9 Release of 2020 in The Wire Magazine. In May 2021, Micaela premiered the cinematic adaptation of the album through REDCAT, titled “BAKUNAWA: Opera of the Seven Moons.”

As an opera composer, Micaela premiered and earned a five-star review for her first original experimental opera, entitled “Unseal Unseam,” at the world’s largest art festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in summer 2016; the work was described as “hypnotic” and “paralyzingly beautiful,” by New Classic LA after its U.S. debut in October 2017. Her most recent opera, “Belarion: A Space Opera” which premiered at the American Legion Center in Pasadena, CA in February 2019, is about the magickal practices of JPL founder Jack Parsons.

As a performer, Micaela played the principal role of Coyote in the critically acclaimed opera, SWEET LAND (dir. Yuval Sharon & Canuppa Luger; Comp. Raven Chacon & Du Yun). She also performed with The Industry in their groundbreaking opera, “Hopscotch, a mobile opera for 24 cars (dir. Yuval Sharon).” She has also toured with hip-hop experimentalists clipping. on their 2017 tour with The Flaming Lips. Micaela also appeared as a principal vocalist in the premiere of Ron Athey and Sean Griffith’s automatic opera, “Gifts the Spirit”; and as a soprano soloist alongside Annette Bening in the play “Medea” at UCLALive.

Micaela is currently a voice teacher on faculty at the California Institute for the Arts and teaches through her private studio, HOWL SPACE, in Los Angeles, CA.

Jay Carlon was born and raised on California’s Central Coast, Carlon’s work is inspired by growing up the youngest of 12 in a Filipino, Catholic, and agricultural migrant-working family. He is committed to connecting his art practice to sustainability and his personal and collective journey of decolonization.

Jay’s work has been presented in Los Angeles at REDCAT NOW Festival, The Broad Museum, Los Angeles Dance Project, Annenberg Community Beach House, LA Dance Festival, Electric Lodge, Los Angeles Performance Practice D+R Residencies, homeLA, and Beach Dances; in New York at 92ndY and The CURRENT SESSIONS; in Phoenix at Breaking Ground Festival; in Monterrey, Mexico at Espacio Expectante; and in Bangkok, Thailand at Creative Migration. Jay is a performer and directing associate with aerial spectacle theatre company Australia’s Sway Pole, where he has performed at the 2014 Olympics, the 2016 World EXPO, and the 2018 Super Bowl.

Carlon has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, Palissimo, Oguri, No)one. Art House, and danced for Rodrigo y Gabriela on Jimmy Kimmel Live (choreographed by Annie-B Parson), in Solange Knowles’ art film Metronia (2018) choreographed by Gerard & Kelly, and was appointed Choreographic Associate for Kanye West’s opera, Mary (2019).

Photos by Raymundo Barrera.

Filed Under: 2020-Current Year, LACE, Performance, Screening, Video Tagged With: apolaki, performance art video, Screening

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LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

welcometolace

“A Tender Excavation” features artists whose b “A Tender Excavation” features artists whose backgrounds are connected to diasporic experiences of discrimination, displacement, erasure, exclusion, slavery, and systemic violence, the practice of piecing together history through memory and counter-narrative is an act of transformation and healing.

LACE is thrilled to introduce 3 of the artists featured in the exhibition...

✧ Tarrah Krajnak (@tarrahkrajnak_studio) is an artist working across photography, performance, and poetry. Krajnak is currently based in Los Angeles.She is an Associate Professor of Art at UCLA, and is represented by Zander Galerie, Cologne/Paris.

✧Susu Attar (@susuhantusu) is a multimedia artist rooted in painting and in her experience as an Iraqi Angeleno. Through her wide-ranging and holistic approach, Susu examines existing frameworks within both everyday life and political movements and creates new contexts that center the notion of art as a means of transformation and a space of interconnection.

✧Zeynep Abes (@zabes93) is an artist, researcher and educator from Istanbul, Turkey. She studied film and interactive media at Emerson College, later getting her start at LACMA’s Art+Tech lab. She is in pursuit of exploring the role artists play in preserving memories to navigate the struggle and alienation that arise from changing social environments and shifting identities.

Join us at the opening reception next Saturday, November 1, 2025 from 2–5 PM at CSULA’s Luckman Gallery. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP at the link in our bio.

Support for this exhibition is provided by Teiger Foundation.
Join LACE for a special screening of Marnie Weber’s film “Song of the Sea Witch” (2020), alongside the Los Angeles premiere of her latest film, “House of the Whispering Rose” (2025). “Song of the Sea Witch” captures a mysterious Sea Witch who lives in isolation at a cabin on the edge of the ocean. Her solitude is broken when one day a group of raucous birds appear on the Sea Witch’s beach. Their presence threatens to take over her peaceful existence.

Join us Thursday, November 13 from 7-9 PM at the Philosophical Research Society (@philosophical_research_society). Following the screening, LACE’s Curator and Director of Programs Selene Preciado (@selene__preciado) speaks with Marnie Weber (@marnieweberstudio) to learn more about the making of the films and her collaborations.

Light refreshments will be provided. Marnie Weber’s exclusive merch will be available for sale before and during the screening. Stick around until the end for a surprise guest appearance! Reservations are filling up quickly and space is limited. RSVP at the link in our bio.

This program is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
VideoLACE is now live as part of the LACE Digital VideoLACE is now live as part of the LACE Digital Archive! Check out the link in our bio to watch documented performances from the last few years with more to come. Explore documentation from LACE projects including “This Home, Forever” (2025), “ENDURANCE” (2025), “ABUNDANCE” (2024), and “APOLAKI” (2023).
“A Tender Excavation” approaches research-base “A Tender Excavation” approaches research-based artistic practices through propositions of alternative histories, bringing together a group of artists who work with historical and familial photographic archives as a point of departure to construct new narratives and elicit transformation.

LACE is thrilled to introduce three of the artists featured in the exhibition...

❥ Jamil G Baldwin (@juh_mile) was born in Lancaster, CA and raised in and across the Inland Empire and Los Angeles. Baldwin’s work explores the ability of the photographic document to reconstitute the histories of images and material into value systems of care.

❥ Camille Wong (@camillexwong) is a research-based artist living in Los Angeles, CA. Their practice examines power, geopolitics, and historiography through the lens of media and spectacle. They approach the gaze of ethnography by authoring the personal into the world through experimental documentary.

❥ Artemisa Clark (@bustilacaca) is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles. She received a MA in performance studies from Northwestern University in 2016 and a MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego in 2015. She has exhibited and presented research in spaces such as MOCA, The Hammer, the Mexican Consulate, the Vincent Price Art Museum, and more.

Join us at the opening reception on Saturday, November 1, 2025 from 2–5 PM at CSULA’s Luckman Gallery. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP at the link in our bio.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Teiger Foundation.
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