Graduate Recital: DOWN, a film by Aliya Ultan

Friday, April 23, 2021 at 7:00pm
YouTube Live

FREE!

In this graduate music recital, Aliya Ultan will present her single-channel video DOWN, featuring a series of performance pieces that form a loop. After the 60-minute screening, there will be a Q&A with Ultan and her collaborators. And a Zoom reception will follow—please make a free reservation through the Box Office to attend the reception.

Ultan writes: “One day while I was playing the cello, I realized something I had always known in my body but nowhere else—to go upward in frequency, density, and volume, one must reach downward. A new world opened up after making a point to physiologically experience this every time I’d pick up my instrument. I found that this naturally occurring paradox also served as a kind of metaphor for this particular moment in my life. By slowing down and searching deep within, one may find the core of their being like the burning center of the Earth. In this heart of magma, energy flows with intention but hundreds of miles from the surface. A desire to literally get to the core of a cello began to percolate and then it occurred to me: I needed to get a cello, take it apart, and bury it. DOWN presents this process in a series of performance pieces that form a loop so that one may choose different starting points to experience it however they please. My hope is that this work sparks a kind of curiosity that initiates cathartic healing through dismantling the machines we choose to interact with daily.”