Peter Boxenbaum Arts Education Centre 
Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences  
1714 21st Street 
Santa Monica, CA 90404 

Curatorial Conversations: Wednesday, September 13, 2023, 2-3 p.m.
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Curated by: Elana Mann

Artists:  lucky dragons, Alison O’Daniel, Susan Silton, Clarissa Tossin

What Can Listening Do? (Part 1) presents a growing movement of artists in Los Angeles who use aurality (and its limits) to alter consciousness and spur action. The exhibition brings together four artists/collectives who are deeply invested in sound as both material and strategy: lucky dragons (Sarah Rara + Luke Fischbeck), Alison O’Daniel, Susan Silton and Clarissa Tossin. Working across mediums, these artists/collectives transmute reverberations of colonialism, patriarchy and ableism into forms that push for societal change. Their artworks create radical vibrations that urge us to organize, listen and voice. Though these artists/collectives have been working alongside each other for years, this exhibition marks the first time their works will be shown together, revealing the echoes and susurrations between them.

This exhibition is the first iteration of a two-part project on the theme of echoes by artist Elana Mann, who is the artist-in-residence at Crossroads School of the Arts & Sciences for the 2023-2024 academic year. The show gathers members of Mann’s Los Angeles art community (colleagues, friends, role models), who have profoundly impacted the art world and Mann’s own artwork. The second part of the project, What Can Listening Do? (Part 2), will take place in January 2024 with a solo exhibition of Mann’s art alongside student workshops.

Bios of participants:

lucky dragons is ongoing collaboration between Los Angeles-based artists Sarah Rara and Luke Fischbeck. lucky dragons research forms of participation and dissent, purposefully working towards a better understanding of existing ecologies through performances, publications, recordings, and public art. lucky dragons have presented collaborative work in a wide variety of contexts, including REDCAT, LACMA, MOCA and The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, London’s Institute for Contemporary Art, The Kitchen in New York, the 54th Venice Biennale, Documenta 14, The Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial) and The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. The name “lucky dragons” is borrowed from a fishing vessel that was caught in the fallout from H-bomb tests in the mid-1950’s, an incident which sparked international outcry and gave birth to the worldwide anti-nuclear movement. luckydragons.org

Alison O’Daniel is a d/Deaf visual artist and filmmaker who builds a visual, aural, and haptic vocabulary that reveals (or proposes) a politics of sound that exceeds the auditory. O’Daniel’s film ‘The Tuba Thieves’ premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and is currently on the International film festival circuit. O’Daniel is a United States Artist 2022 Disability Futures Fellow and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow in Film/Video. She is represented by Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles and is an Assistant Professor of Film at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. alisonodaniel.com

Susan Silton resides in Los Angeles. Her interdisciplinary projects respond to the complexities of subjectivity in a given moment—often through poetic combinations of humor, discomfort, subterfuge and unabashed beauty. These works take form in performance, participatory projects, photography, video, installation, text/audio and print-based works. Her work has been presented at MoCA, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; LAXART, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum; ICA/Philadelphia; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, among others. Silton has received fellowships and awards from the Getty/California Community Foundation, Art Matters, Center for Cultural Innovation, Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles, The MacDowell Colony, Banff Centre for the Arts, Durfee Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, and Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA). Most recently, she has been awarded an LA Metro commission for permanent installation sited in the Wilshire/Fairfax subway station. www.susansilton.com

“[Clarissa Tossin is a] Brazil-born artist [who] has built a collaborative research focused practice from her base in Los Angeles that addresses connective tissue that links place, history, and aesthetics. Employing moving images, installation, and sculpture, she explores their alternative narratives in both built and natural environments of extractive economies. Whether reinserting figurative traditions and ritual practices of Mayan motifs in early twentieth-century Los Angeles architecture, as in her 2017 video Ch’u Mayaa, or more broadly examining a grotesque, postlapsarian world, the artist employs the future perfect language of speculative science to propose ways of seeing our devastated present." (Susanna Phillips Newbury) www.clarissatossin.com

Elana Mann is an artist who explores the power of the collective voice and the act of listening through sculpture, sound, and community engagement. Mann has presented her work in museums, galleries, and public spaces in the U.S. and globally. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at 18th Street Art Center (Santa Monica, CA), Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), Artpace (San Antonio, TX), Pitzer College Art Galleries (Claremont, CA), and Commonwealth & Council (LA, CA). Mann has participated in group exhibitions and screenings at the Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum. She has been commissioned to create public projects by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Montalvo Art Center and the Getty Villa. Mann has received numerous awards, including an International Artist-In-Residence at Artpace San Antonio, the California Community Foundation Artist Fellowship, the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award, and the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship. www.elanamann.com

Contact: 
samfrancisgallery@xrds.org 

More Information: 
www.xrds.org/samfrancisgallery 
samfrancisgallery.org 

About Crossroads School :
Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences is a K-12, coed college preparatory school in Santa  Monica, California. Crossroads was founded upon five basic commitments: to academic  excellence; to the arts; to the greater community; to the development of a student population  of social, economic, and racial diversity; and to the development of each student’s physical  well-being and full human potential. One in four students receives financial assistance. The  School is highly acclaimed for its programs and is a leader in public/private educational  partnerships.