The Sounding Room: David Hurley

The Sounding Room is a rotating residency and experimental platform for artists working across sound, music, and performance.
About this Event

The Sounding Room

July–December 2026

Launching this summer as part of MOCAD’s 20th anniversary celebrations, The Sounding Room is a rotating residency and experimental platform for artists working across sound, music, and performance. Hosted in the garage of the Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead and grounded in Detroit’s histories of cultural innovation and resistance, the program invites artists to use the Homestead as a site for experimentation, collaboration, and new forms of public engagement.

Throughout each residency, artists are supported in developing and sharing new work through open rehearsals, performances, listening sessions, and workshops. Each cycle culminates in a free public performance. In partnership with Third Man Records, each live performance will contribute to a limited-edition vinyl compilation documenting the project over time.

RESIDENTS

• July - Shigeto 
• August - Zekkereya El-magharbel
• September - Battle Elf
• October - Na Bonsai
• November - Dave Hurley

Open rehearsals are tentatively scheduled for selected Thursdays and Saturdays throughout each residency cycle. Please check our Instagram for more information.

Please note that performance times are tentative and subject to change.

November Resident: David Hurley
Saturday, December 19, 3-5pm

Na Bonsai is a Detroit-based musician, producer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work explores sound as a transformative and limitless modality. Through songwriting, graphic scoring, improvisation, sampling, and modular synthesis, their practice bridges sound art, Black experimental music traditions, and speculative sonic futures. Their work investigates memory, consciousness, embodiment, environmental resonance, and collective liberation through immersive listening experiences. Their artistic approach often centers on graphic notation and non-linear compositional systems, creating performances that blur the line between score, ritual, installation, and sonic meditation.

Na Bonsai’s work extends beyond traditional music performance into sound art practices that prioritize deep listening, vibrational awareness, and the relationship between sound, body, and space. Drawing influence from Black diasporic sonic traditions, environmental acoustics, electronic abstraction, and healing-centered practices, they create immersive experiences that invite audiences into altered states of reflection, connection, and possibility.

Photo by Austin T. Richey. Courtesy of the artist.