Background Music – A participatory performance and hike at Headlands Center for the Arts
Sunday, April 13, 2025 | 11am-12pm
Location: Meet at the Commons at Headlands Center for the Arts (944 Simmonds Road, Sausalito, CA)
Free event | Register here to participate (registration is required as spots are limited)
Background Music (2024) is a roving, participatory performance that invites attendees to use a descriptive score by Raven Chacon and a portable speaker to amplify the Marin Headlands’ sonic landscape. Participants should be prepared to hike Headlands’ trails (no more than two miles of walking) and collaborate with each other. The performance will last approximately one hour.
Background Music is followed by Compass, a performance by electric guitarist Zachary James Watkins at 1pm also composed by Chacon. Both performances are presented in partnership with Headlands Center for the Arts and in conjunction with The Blinding Light, the group exhibition at Slash curated by Diego Villalobos featuring work by Chacon. Background Music and Compass are hosted during Headlands’ Spring 2025 Open House (12-5pm), which features additional programming, including artist open studios, lunch for purchase, and readings.
Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and visual artist who creates videos, prints, photographs, and installations that bring sonic experimentation into the gallery. Score-based creation is fundamental to his practice, encouraging generous forms of collaboration among performers and audiences, sights of significance, nonhuman actors, found sounds, and natural elements. In this way, he connects Diné (Navajo) worldviews and relationship models with Western classical, avant-garde, and art-music traditions. Chacon was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation and lives and works in Hudson, NY.
*For inquiries about accessibility or to request an accommodation, please email ana@slashart.org.
This event is generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.