THEATER
Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera
ABACUS
“Part opera, part performance art, and part an as-yet-undefined art medium, the show contrasts big-screen imagery with the wry commentary of a single individual, providing a hauntingly powerful critique of modernity.” FLAVORPILL
ABACUS is a baroque presentation delivered by invented public persona Paul Abacus about the future of national borders, the workings of contemporary persuasion, and our evolving relationships to the screens in our public and private spaces, not to mention our pockets. In style, this one hour, direct-address presentation assumes a TED-talk feel fused with the grand gestures of megachurch media design, all while utilizing emerging technologies and stunning visual effects generated in real-time by custom software and the wireless live feed of two dancing steadicam operators.
Lars Jan is a director, visual artist, writer, and founder of Early Morning Opera, a genre-bending performance + art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience. Jan’s original works — including Holoscenes, The Institute of Memory (TIMe), and Abacus — have been presented by the Whitney Museum, Sundance Film Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, Under the Radar Festival, REDCAT, Hammer Museum, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art TBA Festival, ICA Boston, EMPAC, Toronto Nuit Blanche Festival, London’s Burning, NYU Abu Dhabi, and Times Square Arts among others.
Lars is the winner of the 3rd Audemars Piguet Art Commission and exhibited Slow-Moving Luminaries, an immersive kinetic pavilion on an acre of waterfront during Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2017. His visual works have most recently been exhibited at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and Istanbul Modern, and are represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. Jan is a past MacDowell and Princeton Atelier Fellow, artist-in-residence at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and recipient of the Sherwood, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts100, and 2021 Creative Capital Awards. He is the son of émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, on faculty at CalArts, and a TED Senior Fellow.
Paul Abacus as Himself
Director of Communications: Lars Jan
Broadcast Specialist: Sonny Valicenti
Composer, Sound & Software Designer: Nathan Ruyle
Video, Scenic & Software Designer: Pablo N. Molina
Visualization Software & Data Narrative Designers: James N. Sears and Jonathan Cousins
Lighting Designer & Logistics: Christopher Kuhl
Steadicam Operators: Nicholas Konow and John Luna
Produced by: Miranda Wright
Sound Assistant: Jonathan Becker
Video Assistant: Daniel Jackson
Producing Assistant: Christine Wood
Panda Wrangler: Brad Culver
ABACUS was presented at the LAX Festival with the generous support of Chaos Visual Productions, JonSound, The Tiffen Company and makers of Steadicam, and VER Video Equipment Rentals.
ABACUS was commissioned and premiered by the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC: Troy, NY) and was presented by the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
ABACUS was produced with and managed by Los Angeles Performance Practice.
