Black Hole

Black Hole is a space for audio. Audio is a temporary social architecture made of air. Our curatorial purview is to diagram ways of listening.

The listeners are the performers at Black Hole.

09/10/2020

Starting September 11, you can now also book a Session to experience Francisco López’s seventy minute composition HYPER-RAINFOREST, another West Coast premiere. This work is the product of over twenty years of recording from rainforests in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Gambia, Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Japan, Senegal, South Africa, USA, and Venezuela.

As LA dives into peak wildfire season, HYPER-RAINFOREST takes on resonance as a document of the connection and tension between our ecosystem and our built society. As with Hennix’s Soliton(e) Star, Lopez proposes to the listener a version of what audio is, what a microphone can represent, and what it means to listen through these tools to audio extracted from incredibly rich nature atmospheres. He asks that we not understand the work as simulating anything of the “there” he experienced making these recordings, but as a new hyperreality created by giving attention to the work as a listener.

López’s statement on the work:

“Rainforests are natural acousmatic environments: whereas they typically manifest an astonishing sonic variety and complexity, the sources of all those sounds are overwhelmingly invisible. ‘Hyper-Rainforest’ is an immersive sound work, presented in an installation form, that has been created from original environmental recordings carried out by the artist, along with an extensive and intensive experience of profound field listening, during a twenty-year period in rainforests all over the world. None of the sounds that can be heard in this work –even the most surprising and outlandish– have been processed or transformed. In stark contrast with the most traditional approaches of so-called field recordings, however, this work does not aim at reproducing or simulating any natural “reality” of those original locations. Instead, with a forceful compositional character, this work develops an elaborated and subtle form of hyperreality that strives to generate a self-sufficient sonic virtual world, solely created from those original recordings, with no transformation and with no added sounds, instrumental or otherwise." Read more/book: blackhole.la

08/26/2020

Hennix's work Soliton(e) Star has been playing 24/7 at Black Hole since August 1. Thanks to everyone who has booked a session and spent some time listening at the space. We are open to the public one visitor per day with a complete air exchange and spray down between. HEPA filter blasting all night. Safer and more nourishing than your grocery store!

Proceeds from all donations are distributed 35% to the author of each session, 35% to an authors fund to be redistributed to those in most need or in another way by vote, and 30% to operating.

• • • • • •
Fantastic, in-depth interview with Catherine Christer Hennix by for published today — ⛓ link in our bio! ⛓

Hennix’s ‘Unbegrenzt’ LP is out digitally this Friday, with physical copies forthcoming.

“I got Pandit Pran Nath and La Monte Young there for concerts and they were never invited again. They just didn’t like this kind of music that was spiritual. Sweden is sort of an atheistic, unbeliever culture. You had to read Marx and Marcuse and all kinds of garbage to be hip and we didn’t do that. We liked mathematics, we liked Sanskrit texts and all kinds of things that nobody else was doing. We felt that this was more interesting than this communist-style philosophy. You had to buy into that to be part of the gang, so to speak. And also, we were not interested in alcohol, and that was sort of how these people would meet—they would meet and get drunk. That is the whole thing, that was the entire culture in Sweden at the time—alcohol and left-wing literature. We thought that was incredibly boring.”

08/12/2020

While our on-site programming was delayed and people have taken to the streets, we reallocated some of our resources in order to build a powerful mobile PA-in-motion built into a donated electric cargo bike.

A bike can go places where cars are often prohibited or more closely surveilled. We come out for protests, block parties, fundraisers, lectures in a field, micro concerts, sound baths and the like. Speech remains intelligible up to 300 feet.

You can make a request for us to collaborate with you and read more about LA Audio Solidarity here: https://www.blackhole.la/la-audio-solidarity or just send an email to [email protected] Enormous thanks to for their generous donation and getting this off the ground!

08/11/2020

Get out of your head/phones and book a Listening Appointment at Black Hole w Soliton(e) Star. We are only allowing one person/household a day. It takes just two minutes to book at blackhole.la and you'll get to ponder how these few milliseconds of audio build an entire perceptual world.

07/24/2020

Book a listening session with Soliton(e) Star, an “infintary composition” by Catherine Christer Hennix, never before heard on the West Coast. The work has been playing continuously in Hennix’s living space since 2003. BLACK HOLE is not a gallery or a music venue, but an artist-run space to experience ways of listening and thinking about audio, sound, and music that require a forum of engagement distinct from the existing typologies. Time-based art takes time — BLACK HOLE is a space for that time to be materialized and formed with attention. BLACK HOLE is part of a continuum of alternative listening spaces nearly all of which have disappeared due to urban real estate speculation and a lack of cultural funding decoupled from the art market. Soliton(e) Star marks this new beginning and the launch of an appointment-based format we are simply calling a Session. These are audio situations we will continue to make as long we can sustain a physical location. We will regularly announce new Session collaborations that are available for booking. Soliton(e) Star will play continuously at BLACK HOLE for one month, 24 hours a day and at Hennix’s request, Sessions will be 3-4 hours, no shorter. Cell phone use is not allowed during your visit and phones will be collected on entry. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, we accept groups of up to six listeners who are part of the same household or Covid 19 biosphere. Only one Session will be held a day. BLACK HOLE has a collectized financial model. Donations made when booking will be split between direct payments to the author (35%), contributions to a collective commissioning fund distributed as a split to all BLACK HOLE co-conspirators every quarter (35%) and and to support the operating costs associated with the space and facilitation of Sessions (30%). We operate on a sliding scale from $15-40 per visitor for Sessions. Book a session at blackhole.la

03/28/2020

Dear Friends, We worked incredibly hard to transform an abandoned office next to a prosthetic dental lab into Black Hole. In my lifetime there has never been a worse time to open a space so particularly about being present in it. We do not and will not have virtual programming. When the dust settles hopefully we will still be able to sustain the program. We will make an announcement when the time comes. Till then, Micah

Address

Gardena, CA
90247–90249

Website

http://blackhole.la/

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