As a prelude to the “About Place” project, Kyoco Taniyama presents the kinetic sound sculpture “Sound from the Golden Age” as an online solo exhibition from March 15 to May 14, 2021. For this presentation, Taniyama looks no further than the history of La Verne itself, and in particular, the history of its once prosperous citrus industry within the context of California’s prominent citrus and agricultural economies.

As she began her investigations about the history of La Verne, and the history of California’s citrus industry, she watched numerous archival films that included footage from packinghouses where oranges and lemons would be packed and created for distribution. She noticed that in all these films that missing were the original sounds which would have been coming from these packinghouses. Replacing these “noises” was some sort of narration or background music.

For this exhibition Taniyama has created a phonograph player sitting on wood crates with a specially produced vinyl record that emits the noises from a real orange packinghouse. The viewer/participant is able to turn the player with their own hand, and sound is amplified by a bull-horn made by the artist. She considers these sounds as experiences that might be “echoing in the workers’ heads or in their memories.” With this piece, the artist hopes to conjure the city of La Verne’s historical origins by filling the Harris gallery space with the aural atmosphere of a bygone era.

Curator/artist Ichiro Irie invited Taniyama to develop a work as part of a group exhibition “About Place” at University of La Verne’s Harris Gallery featuring several artists who make work around the concept of place and geography. The exhibition was scheduled to open April, 2020 until the Covid-19 pandemic measures took effect. Like many projects and events around the world, the group exhibition has been postponed until the university can open its doors again to the public