ielele
ielele is a series of live sound / movement narrative portraits that incorporate human and computational vocalization, livecoding, hypertextual mythologies, and fantastical body augmentation to sound out ‘lost’ histories and voices, focusing on female East European figures.
Wearing sensors on their bodies, performers sound out full words by enacting specific gestures in sequence, a reconfiguring of synthesized speech that turns the body, quite literally, into a mouth (see also: BodyMouth). The blend of narrative and computational body glossolalia conjures an alternate, modern feminist mythmaking that transcends traditional male-centered heroics. “ielele,” are female forest creatures in Romanian folklore whose eerie voices led men astray—whoever heard their songs became instantly mute.
still from ielele, work-in-progress performance at ONX Studio, June 2023
In development for 2024:
2023 Onassis ONX, Showcase at TriBeCa Film Festival: Work-In-Progress Performance
2023 New York State Council For the Arts: Commissioning grant
2023 Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre: Artist Residency
2023 New York University’s ITP / IMA Program: Project Fellowship
2022 Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center: Artist Residency
2021 Conference on Movement and Computing, SloMoCo Micro-Residency
