Bajo la Sombra del Sol / Under the Sun’s Shadow is a performative hypertextural scenic work by Carmina Escobar that is staged, makes communion with, and gathers multimedia material at the natural landscape of Mono Lake, California. Using the creation of myth as a way to reintegrate the notion of ecstasy in the social realm to define our ontological principles and communal consecration to social togetherness.

The work is a collaboration with Boss Witch Productions, an artistic production company focused on the intersection of experimental sound art, ritual performance, video art, and transmedia collaboration within natural landscapes. Including a powerful array of artists, performers, and producers: Dorian Wood, Tanya Orellana, Yulissa Maqueos, Wesam Nassar, Oguri, Madeline Falcone, Matthew Johns, Justin Asher, Mataji Booker Graham, Madison Heying, Kozue Matsumoto, Roxanne Steinberg, Hyoin Jun, and Asher Hartman.

Structured in nine chapters, the performance traverses five sites in Mono Lake during five interventions, from sunrise to sundown. The piece is experienced in two ways: at Mono Lake as part of a minimal live audience; and at REDCAT, with an immersive installation in November that brings the audience on a journey towards our own shadow, including live performances interwoven with film in a multi-screen theatrical environment.

Jeronimo Naranjo’s custom-built instruments inhabit both spaces: a membrane sun drum with string filaments that extends throughout Mono Lake into the South Tufa, which opens the surreal solar system of our unconscious. 

Behind this sun, an unknown monster, menacing to confront us with our own darkness.The creatures on this land, figures of nascent light, debonded from the constructs of another human world, must fall into the abyss of darkness to find the true nature within themselves and give birth to a new collective mythology in order to survive. For this they must find in destruction the cause of coming to being, to find the love that lives in the dark corner, to find the sacredness in our relationship to nature as part of ourselves, and the will to live.