m(other), i, 2024
Performance, video, 6:33
Performed at ZXY Gallery, 2024. Curated by Eliot Lambert and Lorraine Cruz.
Performed at Parsons School of Design, 2024. Images by Joy Shen.
An improvisational sound monologue: who is mother, who is other? This video documentation captures a live performance of (m)other, a ritualistic piece using processed, layered vocals and bass sounds in front of a pre-recorded wall-scale projection of the artist speaking the word “mother.” In (m)other, I collapse space, time, and memory from the perspective of someone made “other” to their ancestral mother tongue, mother country, and birth mother. I use my body as a medium to explore sound, touch, and sight. Speaking with a contact microphone on my tongue, I trace lost genealogy and untangle the impacts of my exile through fractured sound. With tonal vocal melodies, stacked loops, and gestural theatrics, I use a contact microphone, my electric bass, and my body to blur the boundaries between in and out by “eating” a contact microphone.