"Listen" promotes sexual respect.  I wrote and sang it for Take Back The Night rallies at the University of Pennsylvania, long ago.  It is for solo voice, with no instruments or gendered language, so anyone can sing it at any time, and the words can apply to any relationship.  I hope it can add warmth and emotional complexity to current conversations about sexual violence.

Listen

"Quiet!" was created as a proposal for a sound installation at Eastern State Penitentiary, an abandoned prison in Philadelphia which hosts art projects. The Quaker prison was designed to give inmates a chance to "reform" themselves through solitary confinement in cells with skylights: the sunlight was supposed to inspire revelation and transformation. In practice, the goal of quiet contemplation was not achieved: cellblocks were noisy. This installation aimed to engage that contradiction of sound and its longed-for absence: visitors would be surrounded by (anxious, gentle, etc.) urgings toward silence ("shh!").

"Quiet!"

This track is an excerpt from my "God Talk" panel at the School of Making Thinking's conference, "Words and [     ]," at the Darling Foundry in Montreal in May 2016.  After performing the phrase "Oh, my God!" in diverse ways, I asked participants to think of other phrases containing repurposed religious language (or codes for that language, such as "Jeez Louise"), and to brainstorm about why we use such words.

God Talk (excerpt)

Blaze is the performance name of a New York artist who uses sound to complexify thought and enrich emotion.  (Images are digital photos of her fingers.)

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