The Electric City

Architecture and Live Performances
Saturday June 20th, 2026 | 7pm
Factory Media Center (366 Victoria Ave N. Hamilton, ON) 

Co-presented with Orchid Contemporary, we’re excited to host The Electric City, an evening of live performances and architecture curated by Job Piston!

An extension of Piston’s solo exhibition, Dig Up My Heart, opening at Orchid Contemporary on June 19th, The Electric City features performances by Hamilton’s own Grandmother Sago, Sah Ra, and Loaming.

Grandmother Sago is the folk project of Ben Ong (b. 1983, Sarawak, Borneo), a Hamilton-based musician (previously of the early-2000s band Bocce) and professional engineer. His upcoming debut album, Let’s Talk About Snakes (fall 2026), features chaotic electroacoustic soundscapes and retells Southern Ontario folklore through a deeply personal lens.

Sahra Soudi (Sah Ra) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, educator, community organizer, and DJ based in Hamilton, Ontario. Soudi deejays under the name Smooth Transitions blending a medley of jazz, soul, boogie, funk, disco, and house while also using interludes as a form of storytelling. Soudi’s musical stylings are reflected in two ambient projects, The Brackish Assembly and SSSY.

Find them on:

https://on.soundcloud.com/CYBRmegpWj9VpUN4ZW
https://thebrackishassembly.bandcamp.com
https://ysss.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-ufo

Photo Credit: @frog.anatomy

Loaming began in late 2023 as the lo-fi music project of members from the Moma Dada art collective. The group has since grown and their sound has pulled from various elements of post-punk, noise rock, free improvisation and spoken word. Loaming is currently comprised of Nikhil Rajput, Jocelyn Boville, Matthew Junkin, Evan Alfano, and Alex Ramsay.

About the Artist

Job Piston (b. Detroit, Michigan) is an artist, curator, and artistic director based in Brooklyn, New York. Working across photography, exhibition design, and installation, his practice explores intimacy, pleasure, grief, and social alienation through cinematic image-making and psychologically charged environments. Piston has presented solo exhibitions and projects at the California Museum of Photography, For Freedoms, Jessica Silverman Gallery, and Charlie James Gallery. He has realized two site-specific domestic installations at Villa Madrid, Los Angeles, 2022-2024. Selected group exhibitions include Artists Space, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Roberts Projects, Louis B. James Gallery, and Galerie Dohyang Lee. His work is held in the permanent collection of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. 

Since 2017, Piston has served as a curator for the Performa Biennial, commissioning live performances by visual artists for their first time. Piston was a curatorial fellow at ARCAthens and RAD Art Fair Bucharest, and an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He received a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

About Orchid Contemporary

This event is presented in partnership with Orchid Contemporary, an independent DIY art space and gallery located in Hamilton’s East End that was created to highlight underrepresented artists and feature programming that is responsive to surrounding artistic communities. It is run by Adrien Crossman, a Hamilton-based artist, curator, writer and educator.

About Factory Media Centre

Factory Media Centre is Hamilton’s not-for-profit artist-driven resource centre for film, video, new media, installation, sound art, and other multimedia art forms. Our mission is to develop and support a vibrant, sustainable, creative, and diverse community of Members and non-Members within Hamilton and its surrounding region.

This event is made possible thanks to generous funding from the incite Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit organization dedicated to revolutionizing support for the arts in the Hamilton Community.