A Show of Refusal

Live Experimental Multimedia Concert…

Featuring music/sounds/poetry/film by:

the unknown sound collective

Zen Sutherland with Mongo Sondo

Cyn Los with Counterfeit Circus

TOYS NOYS

Emily Hay
…and more

Join us for an immersive one-night pop-up residency event titled Refusal. This program brings together local poets, sound artists, and performers for an evening of experimental sound and visual work alongside the release of new material by the unknown sound collective. The event will feature a sequence of short performances of live voice, field recordings, with minimal instrumentation with glitch-based video composed from local footage and still imagery. Through rupture, fragmentation, the works treat silence, error, and discontinuity as absence and as generative acts of resistance. Rather than offering unified narratives or representational closure, the performances invite open-ended, participatory encounters grounded in uncertainty and critical reflection.

This approach is informed by epistemic humility, drawing on Douglas C. Youvan’s framework to foreground the limits of knowledge and the ethics of not-knowing. In parallel, Carole McGranahan’s articulation of refusal as a withdrawal from dominant political and narrative structures guides the project’s orientation toward disengagement as a meaningful practice. Within this context, glitch occurs as both aesthetic and method, where sonic and visual disruption become  negotiation, critique,  creative possibility.

The audience will encounter an immersive, durational environment that emphasizes dialogue, attentiveness, as well as the productive potential of failure. The event is designed to foster exchange among local experimental thinkers and artists.

This concert is a prelude to the experimental program of the Twin Rivers Media Festival coming to Flood Gallery in September.

Donation-based admission. Light refreshments available.