Indexical

We hope you can join us this Friday, June 19, from 5 to 7pm for the opening reception of "Hidden Labors, Sonic Tensions," an ongoing dialogic collaboration between 2026 Indexical Artist-in-Residence Abram Stern and Dorothy R. Santos .
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In this iteration, the artists' reciprocal exchange take the form of sound, installation, and performance as the artists assemble artifacts at the interface of their research and artistic practices. As part of their residency, the duo poetically process materials that include 911 dispatch, slow scan television, medical image metadata, FBI aerial surveillance, emulated breath, and a love letter to caregivers.
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Learn more about the artists at indexical.org

📆 Friday, June 19, 2026
🕣Reception: 5–7pm
📻Performance: 6pm
📍Indexical, 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA

Dima Mabsout is a multidisciplinary, Lebanese artist working in photo, social performance, installation, and material processes, currently based in Santa Cruz.

In Lebanon, between 2019-2023, during the uprising, economic collapse, port explosion and pandemic, she co-founded Zayraqoun, a collective centered around street theatre that collaborated with educational, cultural and political sectors. She started her land-based research with the Museum for the Displaced, exhibiting at the Municipal Gallery of Almada, Portugal and joined the Environmental Art and Social Practice Program at UC Santa Cruz to deepen and diversify her approaches to community actions and social movements that center land and ecology.

She currently is an active member of the Greenhouse Project Collective and initiated the community art project Limbs with her partner Rami Chahine.

⛰ Dima Mabsout + Tyler Rai - STONE SOUP
📅 Sat., June 13, 2026
🕗 Doors at 5:30pm | Show at 6pm
📍 Indexical, 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 at indexical.org

Working across the fields of geo-humanities, visual art, and performance, Tyler Rai investigates processes of earthly transformation. Through material studies of stones, sediments, and soil, her research draws connections between human and geologic embodiments, ancestral memory, and ecological attention.

Her installations and performance works have been shown nationally across the U.S, most recently alongside artists Athena LaTocha and Mary Mattingly in To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home at The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MI) and the Fairfield University Art Museum (CT). She is currently an MFA candidate in Environmental Art and Social Practice at UC Santa Cruz.

⛰ Dima Mabsout + Tyler Rai - STONE SOUP
📅 Sat., June 13, 2026
🕗 Doors at 5:30pm | Show at 6pm
📍 Indexical, 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 at indexical.org

Join us as we close out "The Day That Never Came / El Día Que Nunca Llegó” at with Joy Schendledecker's performative lecture "Common Ground, No Ground," which traces the Riverlands of San Lorenzo Park (the Benchlands) as a site of layered erasure: land violently cleared of its original caretakers, marked ever since by cycles of removal, exclusion, and return. We'll conclude the evening with a Q&A with contributors to the exhibition.

Sun, June 7, 2026
Doors 5:30pm
Indexical, 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA

***All ticket sales and contributions benefit and includes a CD & vinyl copy of the record.

Img 1. Common Ground, No Ground
Img 2. Joy Schendledecker (img courtesy of the artist)
Img 3. Pajaro Loaves and Fishes
Img 4. Vinyl release. Img courtesy of Michael Baba
Img 5. Exhibition at Indexical

Saturday, June 13, Dima Mabsout and Tyler Rai present STONE SOUP, a communal gathering working through ritual, storytelling, sound, and performance, to explore lithic material as a source for transformation and renewal.

Dima Mabsout is a multidisciplinary, Lebanese artist working in photo, social performance, installation, and material processes, currently based in Santa Cruz. In Lebanon, between 2019-2023, during the uprising, economic collapse, port explosion and pandemic, the crises formed the creative imperative to uplift the imagination and reclaim collective narratives. There, she co-founded Zayraqoun, a collective centered around street theatre that collaborated with educational, cultural and political sectors.

Working across the fields of geo-humanities, visual art, and performance, Tyler Rai investigates processes of earthly transformation. Through material studies of stones, sediments, and soil, her research draws connections between human and geologic embodiments, ancestral memory, and ecological attention.

📅 Sat., June 13, 2026
🕗 Doors at 5:30pm | Show at 6pm
📍 Indexical, 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 at indexical.org

This Week! Apmonia String Quartet perform a series of contemporary experimental music works at Radius Gallery. Morton Feldman's Three Pieces for String Quartet (1956) present us with an interplay of plucked and sustained tones, creating a tapestry of interconnected sonic worlds. Rarely performed, Tony Conrad's microtonal piece Minor (1995), exhibits his characteristic drifting sustained tones as it explores unorthodox minor harmonies. Chiyoko Szlavnics' Gradients of Detail (2021), utilizes a graphic score to produce fluttering moire-like glissandi. Finally, Anthony Braxton's Composition No. 17 (1971) utilizes the composer's "Language Music" system, a symbolic notation allowing for performer interpretation.

📅 Sat., May 2, 2026
🕗 Doors at 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
📍 Radius Gallery, 1050 River St #127, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 at indexical.org

Apmonia String Quartet is a freshly formed group featuring .art and Sabrina Salamone on violins, on viola, and .j.borden on cello. Based in NYC, the group’s ethos hinges on a rigorous commitment to both interpretation and improvisation in contemporary experimental music. With longstanding individual commitments to a wide array of practices across the spectrum of contemporary music, this group is excited to bring their collective experience to bear in future collaborations and program curation.

TOMORROW: Indexical returns to Radius Gallery! 🌙

Indexical presents MOONS — an all-female ensemble exploring improvisation, graphic scores, and alternate tunings.

📅 Fri., April 24, 2026
🕗 Doors at 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
📍 Radius Gallery, 1050 River St #127, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 Tickets at indexical.org

Laura Cetilia, a daughter of a mixed heritage Mexican-American musician is at home with in-betweenness, straddling multiple worlds as cellist / composer / educator / artist while working within acoustic / electronic / traditional / experimental sound practices. Her compositions have been described as “unorthodox loveliness” (Boston Globe) and hailed as “alternately penetrating and atmospheric” (Sequenza 21).

Katie Porter is a Brooklyn-based clarinetist, performer/composer, writer, and artist. Her projects include collaborations across the US and Europe with: Lucio Capece, Christine Tavolacci, Bob Bellrue, Devin Maxwell, James Ilgenfritz, Lucie Vitkova, Teerapat Parnmonkol, and Anne Penders.

Christine Tavolacci is a Los Angeles based flutist specializing in contemporary and experimental music. Currently, she is active as a soloist, improviser, curator and chamber musician both in California and internationally. She is co-founder and co-director of Southland Ensemble, and has been a frequent performer in the Monday Evening Concerts series in Los Angeles, the world’s longest-running series devoted to contemporary music.

Judith Berkson is a mezzo-soprano, pianist and composer living in Los Angeles, California. She has collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire and City Opera and has presented work at Picasso Museum Malaga, Roulette, Le Poison Rouge, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, Barbes, Bang On A Can, and the 92 Street Y.

Indexical is proud to present the quartet MOONS at Radius Gallery as part of the Ripple Effect Arts Festival!

Comprised of composer/performers Judith Berkson (accordion/voice), Laura Cetilia (cello), Katie Porter (clarinet/bass clarinet), and Christine Tavolacci (flutes), the ensemble perform original works exploring alternate tunings, improvisation, and drifting tones.

Ripple Effect Arts Festival is a countywide celebration of creativity taking place April 16-26, 2026

📅 Fri., April 24, 2026
🕗 Doors at 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
📍 Radius Gallery, 1050 River St #127, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 Tickets at indexical.org

Indexical is pleased to announce a new partnership with to present a solo performance and talk by Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Creative Lab commissioned artist Sarah Hennies.

📅 Mon., Jul. 27, 2026
🕗 Doors at 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
📍 Indexical, 1050 River st #119, Santa Cruz, CA

In this intimate program, Hennies performs on a set of German cowbells (almglocken), gifted to her by percussionist Michael Ranta from his Cologne shop, Asian Sound. The concert will be followed by a conversation with the artist to discuss her upcoming premiere at the Festival.

Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including including q***r & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic ensemble music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She presents her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist.

SATURDAY: NY experimentalists and perform their minimalist work "Skylighght," constructed upon interlaced vibration, resonance and acoustic environment. Bay Area interdisciplinary ensemble .sfba share the evening.

📅 Sat, April 18, 2026
🕗 Doors at 8pm | Show at 8:30 pm
📍 Indexical, 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA
🎟 at indexical.org