The Hearings project at Todmorden Mills explored diverse listening practices between three artists, designed to build collective knowledge of this historic site. I worked with the embodied listening I practice in my studio in 4 indoor and outdoor spaces at the site over the course of a lunar cycle.
My listening methodology centred around my human body as a queer witnessing and observational tool. Inter-species connection, temporal shifts and trusting physical sensation, as well as non-verbal knowledge was privileged. Using a 1920's phonograph horn to enhance my hearing and amplify my voice, I spent a number of hours with eyes closed, being with the various spaces through my ears and body. I worked with the sounds and sensation of my digestive system as source impulses for vocalizations, returning sounds to the environments I found myself in.
MKV is my queer, gender fluid version of the beautiful and ancient Jewish tradition of ritual bathing, Mikvah. The Waters surround you through any passage or change. They welcome you just as you are in this moment. They communicate with you about your next steps, your self-care, and they remind you of the cosmic vibrations your body is a part of. The Waters are traditionally understood to be the womb of the Divine.
The queer and trans allies who chose to participate in MKV co-created their experience with me. We met to discuss their goals and needs together. We gathered water from nearby Black Creek. I drew their story, and suggested texts and songs we might use, and welcomed them to do the same. MKV played with the connections between vibration and waves that are inherent to the processes of healing and recording. It explored our changing bodies as soft machines. Please see MKV to book a private session.
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Art Gallery of York University, as part of CIA #3
Winter, 2016
A series of playful prophecies which end up looking more like proposals, which in turn attempt to move us towards transformative justice in Hamilton and beyond.
A continued exploration of the sacred geometrical form of the Merkabah through a series of modular stages. Working with recorded sound, live performance, collage and architectural renderings, I unfold this mysterious shape whose cultural locations run a rich gamut from Kabbalistic visions to Afrofuturist cosmology.
In this year-long project, I worked with local organizers, feminists, musicians and social critics, asking how the Merkabah might speak to transformative justice. I presented a series of performances and events on the Merkabah Stages throughout the summer. Mysterium Tremendum was developed in collaboration with Caitlin Craven and Meaghan Ross as well as various local feminist activists and organizers.
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Exhibitions:
Workers Arts and Heritage Centre
Hamilton, Ontario 2015
An exploration of the sacred geometrical form of the Merkabah through a series of modular stages. Working with recorded sound, live performance, collage and architectural renderings, I unfold this mysterious shape whose cultural locations run a rich gamut from Kabbalistic visions to Afrofuturist cosmology. I worked with four community organization and collectives in Windsor and Detroit to present the work: Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women's Newcomer Art Project; Sandwich First Baptist Church, under the direction of Lana Turner; Windor's ShakeUp community radio show, hosted and produced by Paul Chislett; and The New Work Field Street Collective, part of the Grace Lee Boggs Centre for Community Nurturance in Detroit. EcoEquitable (Ottawa) assisted with production.
Construction grade plywood, leather, canvas, megaphones, mp3 players, risograph prints
Art Gallery of Windsor, as part of Border Cultures Two (work, labour), 2014
A fabulous re-imagining of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s iconic bed-ins. Toronto publics talked politics with LGBTQ folks in our public honeymoon suite for four days. We covered all the issues that are written on our bodies, from black popular culture to homonationalism. No radical uprising, just flowers, respectful debate, radical facilitation and queen-sized love.
With: 2-Spirit Skillshare; El-Farouk Khaki and Troy Jackson; R3 Collective; Trish Salah and Beau Coup
Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, 2013
Web streamed collective reading in which a group of feminists share a sinister 2nd wave Jewish feminist text by Cynthia Ozick. In it, a New York mayor faces her hubris thanks to a monster she inadvertently created. With Ozick's prophetic words, we attempt to expedite Mayor Rob Ford's removal from office on the eve of his possible ousting.
Feminist Art Gallery, Toronto, 2012
The year is 2069. The Vera List Centre for Art and Politics, like most institutions in New York, is now funded and controlled by the Greater New York Culture Council (GNYCC), a seemingly benevolent board designed to discourage the creation and dissemination of radical culture. After the Wall Street collapse of 2014, New York split into smaller borough-states. The Union Square district was annexed by former Chelsea gallery owners as a factory-town style production zone. A group of former critically thinking artists, now known as The Squares, are producing thousands of art widgets to satisfy the myopic art market. Follow the visual cues to hack your way into the GNYCC's Wall of Sound to the liberated zone of Lower Manhattan, now known by its Indigenous name, Manahatta.
Web Project. Created as a commissioned intervention in VLC's archive in celebration of the twentieth anniversary the its founding.
2013
http://projects.veralistcenter.org/embodied-arts-collective-assembly/
Participatory sound sculpture which uses the acoustics of the gallery to activate empathic sounds in the space. Based on Judith Butler’s examination of the grievable body, I’ve gathered a number of phrases and names from my colleagues of whose life they apprehend as grievable. Their answers range from “thriving coral reefs” to “my younger boy self, nameless, lost, a ghost”. These texts are stamped into galvanized steel pipes inserted or hanging in a back area of the gallery. Participants are invited to strike the pipes they relate to while holding them. The act of simultaneously holding and striking the pipes activates resonance in their bodies.
18 aluminum and galvanized steel pipes with text; birch plywood ; non-toxic insulation; carpet; marimba mallets; signage; instruction cards
The Kitchen, New York, 2012
University Art Gallery at University of California, San Diego, 2014
Public improvisation using cue cards of speeches by Judith Butler, Angela Davis and Slavov Zizek at the 2012 Occupy Wall Street protests.
“Hello my name is:” nametag; scripted cue cards; human conversation; People's Mic, 2012
#searchunderoccupy group exhibition, Aronson Gallery, New York 2012
Image and motor kinetic piece exploring Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History character.
paper, wood, toy motors, circuit boards, Arduino microcontroller chips, adapters, conductive wire
Gallery 44, Toronto 2011
I invite audiences to join me over Skype for a rehearsal and performance of demonstration chants against the border walls in Palestine and Mexico
computer with videoconferencing software; microphone; speakers; projector; parking booth; sound samples from demonstration chants
pitch_patch_pulse | Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2010
Prospectives'12 International Festival of Digital Art | Reno, Nevada, 2012
Week long construction of scaffolding in public with daily and nightly events. The project highlighted the queer, labour and progressive Jewish history of Toronto’s historic Kensington Market.
vocalists, commercial scaffolding, mah jongg tiles, plywood, historic storefront and fence, construction lights
Kensington Market, Toronto, 2009
18 pillow cases woven from audiocassette tape and wool. The tapes were made from my collection. I listened to these albums ad nausea during my tragic, dramatic queer adolescence.
pillowcases, hacked playhead, speaker, switch, acrylic and plywood.
Xpace, 2009
- can you say haa? Radio documentary, co-produced with CBC and Charles St. Video, 2003
- Needletrade, violin, laptop, archival recordings, 2001
- Shtiller: Der Golem, excerpt from live accompaniment to silent film from 1915, 2005
- Down with Astarte, 2010
- Jap Lament, 2009
- Kitchen Shekhinah, 2008
- Litergic Dirgic, 2008
- Mollie’s Fill, 2008
- Night Beam, 2007
- She Dropped Away, 2009
