The audio tour for John Chamberlain: Choices shares perspectives on select key works from the exhibition.
www.guggenheim.org/chamberlain

Exhibition Website

John Chamberlain's Involvement with Abstract Expressionism

In this track, curator X Zhu-Nowell describes how Wu Tsang’s "Anthem" creates a sonic, communal experience by introducing audio—including recordings of musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s voice—into the rotunda space.

X Zhu-Nowell: My name is X Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Today, I’m talking about Wu Tsang’s Anthem. Here is Wu discussing her practice in 2018.

Wu Tsang: My practice is very centered around filmmaking and conversations with the history of cinema and also with video art, installation art. 

Zhu-Nowell: Anthem is a new commission conceived by Wu in collaboration with the legendary singer, composer, and transgender activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland: I was born singing according to my mother. My mother said that when she turned on any music from about the age of two months on, I would begin to hum.

Zhu-Nowell: The quality of sound in the Guggenheim’s architecture can be characterized as this cave-like reverb. So Wu really wanted to work with these paths and weave together Glenn-Copeland’s voice into a larger tapestry of ethereal sounds that are spatially arranged throughout the sweeps, curves, and even cavities of the museum’s six-level rotunda gallery. And by disbursing the autonomy of Glenn’s warm and spiritually uplifting voice among the cascading reverberations and other sensory forms, Wu Tsang actually transformed the museum into what she calls a “cosmic cathedral”—an environment where the bodies and voices are interwoven amongst layers of opacity, transparency, melody, rhythm, or reverb.

This exhibition, Re/Projections, was conceived in the summer of 2020. It was created at a moment that allowed curators to rethink the practice of exhibition making. It allowed us to ask questions such as, What is a museum space? Who is it for? And can we reimagine possibilities for a collective resonance? 

There is one word in Chinese called yeshi (野史), which literally translated means “wild history” or “tales from the margins.” So Wu has always [been] interested in working with marginalized voices and kind of thinking about other types of stories and narratives that are outside of a dominant discourse. To decentralize a familiar history is to allow different voices to coexist at the same time. Wu often creates environments and tell stories that invite people to experience states of interconnectedness.

Tsang: I was never formally trained as a filmmaker, but I did get into filmmaking because I was a community organizer. And I discovered that making films was a way to bring people together and that when everybody can kind of get together and do what they love to do best, something comes out of that that’s bigger than any one of us 

Zhu-Nowell: It’s a dream to work with Wu. Seeing this work come to life has been a very inspiring journey, and I am constantly being taken away by how much layers of information and layers of complexity that I discover each time that I think about and think with this particular work.

Wu Tsang, "Anthem", 2021. Color video with sound, fabric, carpet, and acoustic panels, dimensions vary with installation. © Wu Tsang. Rendering by Lucie Rebeyrol

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Wu Tsang's Anthem, 2021

As part of the Guggenheim Museum’s Summer of Know series, artist Ad Minoliti and activist Adam Werner discussed social and artistic responsibility, and building community on digital platforms, with moderation by X Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum.

Photo: Ed Marshall

Archivo de la Memoria Trans
https://archivodelamemoriatrans.tumblr.com/

Queer Ancestors Project
https://www.queerancestorsproject.org/

The Feminist School of Painting
http://fschool.kadist.org/

Cromoactivismo
https://www.facebook.com/Cromoactivismo-1430319627007557/

Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal Seguro y Gratuito
http://www.abortolegal.com.ar/

Summer of Know

Conversation: Ad Minoliti and Adam Werner (2019)

Listen to audio about exhibitions and artworks at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark building is home to a collection of modern and contemporary masterpieces.

Wu Tsang's Anthem, 2021

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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