We contemplate the futility of division and conflict, and celebrate unfettered human resolve by coming together.

A performance piece on the inhumanity of torture, harsh noise is piped into the body and heard through the flesh in Bertram Wee’s my body, broken for your amusement: this is later externalized through extreme amplification. The notion of conflict and friction is emphasized in Hoh Chung Shih’s game-like secret music one, with three independent groups of musicians with somewhat autonomous objectives pulling the trajectory of the music in different directions.

Aaron Holloway-Nahum‘s deeply personal work offers a perspective on loss, ruminating on the trail of destruction wrought by the scourge of COVID, accompanied by a video depicting medical professionals at the front lines during the pandemic.

In the face of adversity, we celebrate courage: Ken Ueno’s wildly expressive Talus takes recovery from life-changing injury as creative impetus: the conceit is embedded into this virtuoso work through unique sonorities, these generated through analysis of an x-ray of a shattered leg. The late, great Frederic Rzewski has the final word with his Coming Together, a politically-charged, socially-aware masterpiece that rallies against the scourge of injustice.