Star Choir

Watch on Hammer Channel

In this cosmic opera by artists Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, a starship crew seeks refuge on the hostile planet 85K: Aurora. As the planet defends itself from the crew’s invasive presence, the humans evolve to become a part of a queerly multi-species organism that covers the entire world. Produced by The Industry, an experimental company that expands the operatic form in Los Angeles, this film chronicles Star Choir’s live premiere in fall 2023 at the historic Mt. Wilson Observatory, where an ensemble cast and orchestra performed inside the 100-inch telescope.

Star Choir was performed by vocalists Sarah Beaty, Carmen Edano, Mikaela Elson, Kelci Hahn, Shyheim Selvan Hinnant, Jon Lee Keenan, Ben Lin, and Gregório Taniguchi with instrumentalists Guillermo E. Brown, Elizabeth Huston, Marlon Martinez, Ethan Philbrick, Malik Taylor, and Lucy Yates, conducted by Marc Lowenstein.

Malik Gaines & Alexandro Segade have collaborated for decades, on theater, film, video, installation and live performance art. They have founded several collaborative groups, including the collective My Barbarian, founded with Jade Gordon in 2000, which has been the recent subject of a survey exhibition and performance program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and a monograph published by the Whitney Museum and Yale University Press. My Barbarian’s work has been presented at LACMA, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, SFMOMA, MoMA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Kitchen, The New Museum, Participant Inc. and many other U.S. venues; and internationally at Museo El Eco, Mexico City; DeAppel, Amsterdam; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; The Power Plant, Toronto; El Matadero, Madrid, and others. They were included in two Performa Biennials, the Whitney Biennial, two California Biennials, the Montreal Biennial, and the Baltic Triennial.

For more than ten years, The Industry has been producing groundbreaking works of opera and performance in some of the most unexpected locations in greater Los Angeles. Star Choir continues this tradition, unfolding within the historic 100” telescope dome at the Mount Wilson Observatory, which first offered visitors a look to the sky in 1917. Over one hundred years later, this site's commitment to progress, curiosity, and creativity—and to considering humanity's place in the cosmos—becomes a deeply resonant and evocative context for The Industry’s work.