Artscape: Convergence featuring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

Artscape is USC's largest student-curated annual arts exhibition, featuring performances and featured speaking engagements highlighting music, film, dance, theatre, and fine arts. With a theme of "convergence" this year, the event will be held in three parts on March 30, 2025 from 5-11pm.

This year, Artscape: Convergence is in collaboration with: USC Visions&Voices, USC Arts Now & the Office of the Provost, USC School of Dramatic Arts, USC Kaufman School of Dance, USC School of Architecture, Speakers Committee, Graduate Student Government, Academic Culture Assembly, and Student Assembly for Accessibility.

PART I: Featured Performance in Bovard Auditorium.
Taking place in Bovard Auditorium, this three-act devised performance embodies the essence, story, and purpose of Artscape: Convergence. The performance shares the story of the Cycle of Convergence: how one may encounter unfamiliar ideas, converge with and alongside them, and thus transcend to a state of constant open-mindedness. Once transcended, the cycle repeats in oneself endlessly, ethereally, and effortlessly.

PART II: Celebrity Guest Engagement (Featuring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) in Bovard Auditorium.
Taking place in Bovard Auditorium directly after Transcendence, this engagement enriches a practical discussion around the topic of convergence and how it applies to a particular celebrity’s experience. We are seeking a speaker with a diverse arts experience and cultural background and a connection to political activism through arts expression. We are interested in celebrating an innovative artist who reaches for new ways to tell stories and engage with an audience. This moderated conversation will indulge in topics of finding oneself through art, exploring a career as a multi-disciplinary artist, how one may use art as a tool of expression and progression, and how the concept of convergence applies to the arts and everyday life.

PART III: Exhibition Experience in Alumni Park.
After exiting the doors of Bovard Auditorium, guests will be guided to the open gates of Alumni Park, where they will be able to experience four major exhibition quadrants: Artscape Live (a stage featuring music, dance, and theatrical performances), Artscape Cinema (an outdoor constructed cinema featuring films and discussions with filmmakers), Artscape Gallery (a curated gallery featuring student artwork and installation pieces), and an area with activities and to discuss experiences of the night). The park will be transformed into a 1950s retrofuturism- and Tomorrowland-inspired immersive experience with original projections, lighting, sound, and experiential activation design curated for Alumni Park. All featured arts throughout each quadrant will also further embody the theme of convergence and invite guests to personally connect with its meaning.

THE THEME OF CONVERGENCE:
Artscape: Convergence tells the story of how one may encounter the unfamiliar and converge with it to create newness. In doing so, it becomes possible to transcend the present moment and reach toward hope. Artscape: Convergence is defined as a view of the expression of human creativity and imagination as it comes together to form a new whole. It derives from how arts, humanities, and newly, technology, are divinely intertwined, and how they must continue to converge with one another to form new ways of existing, experiencing, expressing, engaging, and emerging. The experience exists under the aesthetic guise of 1950s retrofuturism. This art form emerged from WWII, during a convergence of nations and technological advancement which led to exponential artistic development. It was a time holding space for hope in the future. Today, we reimagine the idea of hope as the result of transcending the moment through the act of convergence.

MORE ABOUT ARTSCAPE: CONVERGENCE
Individuals with disabilities who need accommodations to attend this event may contact USC Performing Arts Committee at usgpac@usc.edu. We request that individuals requiring accommodations or auxiliary aids such as sign language interpreters and alternative format materials notify us at least 7 days prior to the event. Every reasonable effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations in an effective and timely manner.

This program is open to all eligible individuals. USC Performing Arts Committee operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the USC’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.

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