Telegraph Valley
Created in collaboration with Adam Stone (Sound Artist) and Elle Hong (Dramaturg)
Premiere: RedLine Contemporary Art Center, March 23, 2024
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Assembled from roofing material, multiplayer cassette tape loops, rotating light sources, (de)constructed liquid transmitters (an early ancestor of the landline telephone), plywood, house frames, rudimentary electricity experiments, and a dancer, Telegraph Valley is a performance and installation work devoted to friction. It is specifically devoted to the friction of “having a body” while “being a body.” Friction is conductive. Telegraph Valley uses it to:
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- reverse engineer the feeling of having sent out and/or received a message through the
medium of one’s body
- vibrate memory through matter
- recirculate human intimacy, effort and interiority through connection with analog and
digital technologies
- communicate with the dead
Telegraph Valley is an emergent event set in a sculptural/sonic installation that evolves with each performance. Battery powered projectors strapped to electric pottery wheels sit atop
ladders at the center of the room. As they rotate, their light beams slide across the space. The dancer runs to keep up, the light rhythmically dictating the progression of the work.
Multiplayer cassette tape loops to circulate sound through a maze of magnetic tape underneath a floating
(16’ x 16’) floor. Performances are sonically recorded and funneled beneath the dancer’s feet. Visitors dip their heads into holes in the floor to listen for a traveling sonic score that
reorganizes relations between maps/territory, past/future/present, death/rebirth, above/below.
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Telegraph Valley is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, square product theatre, and NPN. We are one year into a two year creation process, and have been developing the varying elements of this work through performance events with RedLine, Museum of Longmont, MCA Denver, Black Cube Nomadic Museum [forthcoming], and through exhibitions at Union Hall Gallery and Understudy Denver
[forthcoming].
