installations
16 September 2024
My work is invested in how the act of listening constructs our ethics, how sound is transformed by attention. recent work has focused on how attention to everyday environmental sounds (dripping water, running streams, bubbling water coolers, and rushing ocean waves) unveils complicated emotional attachments. ongoing work reflects on the property conditions structuring performance. my current work examines echoes.
a prayer said in disbelief [release show] (2024)
drip (2024)
yours in dentistry [evil dentist] (2023)
Staged at ISSUE Project’s Room’s 22 Boerum Theater, our third program “yours in dentistry” combined performances, a panel discussion with organizers of local DIY spaces, and an installation detailing the relationship between ISSUE Project Room and the real estate development company Two Trees Reality. The installation examined the forty year arch through which Two Trees Reality amassed property along the Brooklyn waterfront through buying buildings in neighborhoods heavily populated by artists in order to upscale these neighborhoods. Two Trees Reality’s transfer of the lease of 22 Boerum Place to ISSUE Project Room in the 2010s was contextualized within the installation as an ethical compromise forced upon the nonprofit by the real estate industry in order to gain access to space and funding. Presented alongside the performances and panel discussion, this program functioned as institutional critique, highlighting the divergent ways DIY spaces and nonprofit arts organizations interact with the real estate industry.
Landscape: Brooklyn Waterfront (2023)
This installation submerges a speaker playing a loop of a segment of an oral history featuring David and Jane Walentas, the couple behind Two Trees Realty, within 10 gallons of East River Water. Within the recording, the couple discusses how they invested in East River waterfront areas populated by artists as a development strategy, identifying artists as a source of value and precursor to rising rents. Through a series of microphones, the sound of their voices moving through the water is captured and played through the accompanying speakers.
some documents (2023)
A research-based installation examining Two Trees Realty, ISSUE Project Room, and neoliberal urban development.
Stuck at the Office [evil dentist] (2023)
our first program “Stuck at the Office” involved a durational installation and performance piece wherein two musicians navigated the cubicles and water coolers of an unused office space. The durational aspect of the performance transformed the mundane office into a space for community formation through asking audience members to engage with one another and with sound sculptures prepared by evil dentist.
The Never-Ending Break Room [evil dentist] (2023)
An installation is composed of an interconnected set of water coolers connected to speakers to amplify the sound of water dripping into the water cooler. These two images illustrate one of the water coolers and the accompanying conceptual wall text.
Phone Kudzu [evil dentist] (2023)
“Corporate Retreat” [evil dentist] (2023)
Horrors of Capitalism [evil dentist] (2022)
a haunted house
Battle for Trash Bridge [evil dentist] (2022)
our event “The Battle for Trash Bridge” involved a night of noise and experimental electronic performances organized around an underutilized public bridge.
Butterflowers [david & rick] (2022)
a collaborative installation in which attendees can wander through the void in real time, reflecting on all of the mistakes that have led them to the intersection of arts and technology. Friday July 15th experience butterflowers: how to become the perfect human @wondervillenyc grounded in butterflowers’s void and inspired by surveillance culture, facial augmentation software in photo booths, butterflies wearing cowboy boots, and breakcore, the installation deploys audio/visual interactivity between hardware samplers and the game’s AI to immerse participants within an alien landscape. combining webcam surveillance footage with multi-channel projections, the project asks how long can one stare at themself before they become unrecognizable.
Three Bedrooms in the East Village (2022)