community mix tape
sound installation
Installed: 2020
Sponsored by: LA Forum for Architecture
Thank You: Britt Jones, Katy Foley, Stephanie Lin, Eri Yamagata, Matthew Alvarez
The most Gracious Singer-Storytellers: Afifa Wardak with Madina Wardak , Araceli Roman with Jose Devora, Bertha Napoles, Camilla Gaisie, Deshanae Cantley, Doris Cantley, Elisa Read, Laurel Kleeger-Read, Eva Maya de la Torre with Iván-Nicholas Cisneros, Frances Clinton, Heather Chin with Eric Chin, Helen Chung with Eric Chin, Julian Pan, Kiki Kim, Larae Cantley with 2Hungry & Royalty, Malathi Iyengar and Shaarada Mani Chalan, Monali Khandagle, Myung-Soon Yoo, Nina Lamothe, Anonymous, Setsuko Paula Watanabe
20 weather balloons, 20 speakers, helium, 20 recorded songs from women of color in LA
Sound Installation, Judson Studios, Los Angeles CA
Community Mixtape is an installation of song, 노래, Canción, Bài hát, Awit, गीत, 歌曲, ترانه, 歌, เพลง, երգ. These sounds move through air. During 2020s pandemic, women of color from Los Angeles sang songs and told me stories about change over the phone. One empathizes by listening to stories; song is a lyric-story set to music. These songs are about the human voice. Listening to someone is the same as needing someone and we all need each other so much.
Sound has always been close to my heart as an artist. Sound is the sense that emotes beyond it’s coded containers. Cackling laughter, onamotopoeic korean, slurping noodles, east coast cicada hypnosis, snowfall's ambient absence, that moving ballad "Lady in Red". Its invisible presence in a vision-centered, propioceptic world provides sensory respite. To allow our everpresent hearing to tell us a story & rest our judgemental sight. During the dead heat of the pandemic in 2020, I called 20 BIPOC mothers in LA and asked them to share a song with me. They generously shared songs and stories in Cantonese, Korean, Spanish, Hindi, Pashto, and Tagalog. I created an installation out of the songs with 20 weather balloons, each with a mini-speaker attached. Each song was distributed across 10 channels so that the songs moved from one weather balloon to the next. Songs are aflight & moving. Many of the mothers came to the installation's opening.
