Patty Chang and David Kelley @LACMA

Patty Chang and David Kelley: Stray Dog Hydrophobia
Live screening and performance

Date&Time: Thursday, November 6 | 7–8:30 pm
Venue: LACMA (5905 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036)

BANK is pleased to share that artists Patty Chang and David Kelley will present Stray Dog Hydrophobia at LACMA in a special evening of film and live music.

This powerful work, supported by the museum’s Art + Technology Lab, explores deep sea mining and its ties to colonialism, slavery, extraction, and geoengineering—brought to life through a live, immersive musical performance.

Surrounded by four projections, a chorus of vocalists, percussionists, and horn players will synchronously perform amongst the audience conducted by Yasna Yamaoka Vismale, who created the score for the film.
Vismale's dynamic score blends ethereal vocals, Afro-Jamaican rhythms, free jazz, and West African sounds for an unforgettable night.Guests are invited to move freely through the space as the performance unfolds on the Smidt Welcome Plaza, with seating also available.

After a brief introduction, guests will be able to circulate throughout the installation as the performance unfolds on LACMA's Smidt Welcome Plaza. Seating will also be provided.

The artists’ related exhibition at ArtCenter College of Design remains on view through January 2026.

ABOUT THE ARTWORKS

Stray Dog Hydrophobia

LACMA presents Stray Dog Hydrophobia, a multimedia film installation and live musical performance by interdisciplinary artists and researchers Patty Chang and David Kelley. Stray Dog Hydrophobia unfolds across four monumental screens in the Smidt Welcome Plaza, foregrounded by the museum’s new David Geffen Galleries. This ambitious presentation, developed and performed in collaboration with composer Yasna Yamaoka Vismale, will take place exclusively on Thursday, November 6 at 7pm.

The film addresses the urgent ecological and political threats that deep-sea mining poses for already-fragile ocean ecosystems. Filmed between Jamaica and the UK, Stray Dog Hydrophobia traces historic precedents for the contemporary crisis. The video reveals how early colonial scientific expeditions and natural history collections emerged from and facilitated the transatlantic slave trade, the consequences of which persist across time and space. These acts of cataloguing and classification, often fueled by imperial ambition, laid the groundwork for not only future forms of extraction and exploitation across the globe, but Western scientific disciplines themselves. Chang and Kelley’s narrative assumes documentary, poetic, and speculative forms to demonstrate the ways in which the natural and political worlds have always intersected, often with lasting environmental and human consequences.

Immersed in a plaza surrounded by four projections, audiences will experience a rare fusion of live music, narration, and film. A chorus of musicians and dramatic narrators brings these elements of the film to life, inviting us to collectively advocate for an embodied and sympathetic kinship with the earth and its inhabitants. The performance—featuring composer Yasna Yamaoka Vismale’s score of ethereal vocals, Afro-Jamaican drum rhythms, free jazz, West African influences, and Maroon music—enact resistance, hope, and kinship that shift our relation to the natural world and its inhabitants.