Three Times Around the Long Way, 2013
The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN
Three Times Around the Long Way begins to listen to and view the human voice as auxiliary to physical presence. People move from no voice, to song, to disembodied singing.
A cycle is initiated: past, present, future-past.
Over the course of the show we will create a space where the viewer can enter and participate in the singing of a single hymn. This space will include wooden risers and a dressing room area. Each individual person who so chooses will “join” the choir by wearing a modified choir-robe and lending their voice to the song. These participants voices will be recorded and a photograph will be taken of them during the song in order to document the event. As this harvesting of voices continues over the course of the exhibition, the accumulation of portraits will become part of the display as the choir ranks “grow”.
The project culminates in a simultaneous performing of all voice samples, with a mini speaker dedicated to each individual voice delivering an full audio performance of an embodied choir that was never physically assembled together.
In this uncanny final moment when we hear but do not see a hundred voices singing, we recognize something familiar, something reminding us of our own lonesome songs, howls, and prayer-some screeches.
