This semester, Oxy Arts is offering the Studio Art course Art Outside the Bounds, where students learn from an LA-based artist through the Wanlass Artist in Residence Program. The year-long residency allows artists to develop their own curriculum for students and share their practice with students and the greater Occidental community. The Industry, an experimental performance art and opera company, is this semester’s artist in residence.
Oxy Arts Director Meldia Yasayan said the intention of the Wanlass Artist in Residence program is to provide students and the broader community with an opportunity to engage with a local artist doing interesting, process-based work.
“We are able to develop a strong and intimate relationship with the artist and understand their practice in a new way,” Yasayan said. “The artist is able to fulfill out-of-reach projects or work they wouldn’t otherwise be able to present.”
Yasayan said The Industry will be the first non-visual artist of the Wanlass program. She said coursework this semester includes listening, reading, discussion and collaborative experiments related to operatic design and that the class also visits locations of past and present Industry productions across LA.

Chohi Kim, a member of The Industry and the primary instructor of the class, said the class is focusing on site-specific experimental opera. She said the class has watched The Industry’s Invisible Cities in film, an opera staged at Union Station.
“The audience walked through Union Station with headphones, and all the singers had mics,” Kim said. “They [listened] to the opera while walking around with regular people, like kids running around.”
Kim said the class has been discussing the location of the audience, the idea of a thorough line of narrative and the notion of hyper opera, a term coined by harpist and CalArts Professor Anne LeBaron.
“I think the most rewarding part of this class for me will be seeing what the students make and how they react to and absorb the performances that I show them,” Kim said. “It’s really special for students to be immersed in the real-life performances of LA and for that inspiration to directly inform this collaboration.”
Co-director of The Industry Ash Fure said the class will explore opera not as an abstract musical form, but as an experiment that mobilizes senses and perceptions toward shared experiences that grapple with the complexity of the present. According to Fure, students will analyze and question the power structures and politics at play in what seems like neutral operatic conventions.
“Our goal will be to surface the hidden hierarchies and agendas of modernism and pose new questions about how we might subvert, expand and explode these norms,” Fure said.

Lucas Donovan (senior) said he was drawn to the Art Outside the Bounds class because he wants to see and understand unconventional art and new mediums in the LA art scene. Donovan said his favorite part of the class is its emphasis on collaboration.
“Because it’s a super small class, every student has a chance to let their strengths shine through,” Donovan said. “We’re also able to collaborate with people who have a lot of experience in their field. It’s a great opportunity to get into the LA arts and music space.”
Oxy Arts Manager of Education and Community Management Frankie Fleming said she has never encountered a performance art, theater or music company that does anything like The Industry.
“I think they felt like a pretty natural fit. We thought it would be really interesting for students to get to take a course with them,” Fleming said. “Offering a compelling and diverse range of studio practices and artists who make artwork in different ways is important to the goals of the program.”

Fleming said she believes the course provides students with a special opportunity to spend time with people who have committed their lives to a multidisciplinary art form.
“I think we have an incredible art department on campus, but The Industry’s work really falls in between [departments]. Each production they do is pretty different from the last one.”
Sarah Wass, the deputy director of The Industry, said one of the things that makes the company unique is its accessibility.
“Opera is for everyone,” Wass said. “It’s a transformative art, and everyone deserves access to it. That is one of the driving ideas of The Industry.”
In June, The Industry will co-present ANIMAL [the underground] with Oxy Arts, an installation and live performance created by Ash Fure that features custom full-bodied sound machines.
Contact Josey Long at jlong2@oxy.edu