Aquifer of the Weave

James Allister Sprang

 

Photo by Maria Baranova

Performances took place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.

Dedication:
For you, who helped. For bridges.

Epigraph:
Memory in our works is not calendar memory; our experience of time does not keep company with the rhythms of month and year alone. – Édouard Glissant

“I have said before
that the music is the words
and the words are the music
It is all there for you to understand if you can
and for you to feel, regardless.”
– Sun Ra

“Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeit it’s hard, damn, this quick incarnate incompleteness.” – Fred Moten

Aquifer of the Weave is a 45-minute audiovisual experience featuring a monumental weaving of cyanotypes and immersive sound, both made to cocoon a turning inward. This work invites ten audience members at a time to consider the following:

We are all longing. Nostalgia for the old normal is a pang in all of our sides.

Like a longing for a lost homeland, I feel it under my skin and realize I have never considered my relationship with our ancestral past as a type of nostalgia; as an inherited nostalgia bone. Now, more than ever it is difficult to ignore these bones, like oars, gliding through today’s seas of precarity.

Our communities have always engaged nostalgia as a compass, simply by other names. As ritual, as signifying… or the remix; as the American blues, as the Jazz solo, as the sampling of Hip Hop or the second lines of New Orleans. Always returning the joy of the past to the present we somehow know how to be present, in the moment, while moving towards the mirage of what is gone.

This work is written and woven by many. It is rooted in holding together what would like to fray. Rooted in moving forward while fixing our shoulder blades to hold what shines bright on our backs. Let us meditate. Let us remember that deep listening transforms that which is before us. Let us begin…

From the studio of James Allister Sprang

Core Collaborators:

Marie de Testa: Set Designer and Architectural Intervention
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew: Lighting Designer
Michael Alexander Hernandez: Sound Supervisor
Sandra Garner: Line Producer / Production Manager
Jasmine Lynea: Documentary Filmmaker
4DSOUND: Sound Consultancy and Specialized Software

Musicians:

Mathis Picard: Keys
Rafiq Bhatia: Guitar
Jake Goldbas: Percussion
James Allister Sprang: Modular Synthesis and Producer
Brendan McGeehan: Recording and Mixing Engineer

Construction of cyanotype weaving led by James Allister Sprang, includes:

Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning / Beautify NYC cohorts: Nakib Abedin, Nazier Alexander, Teniola Bakare, Anabil Biswas, Prama Biswas, Caitlin Charles, Kiara Gabour, Sade Garrick, Prophet Green, Mosuir Jabir, Shaba Jahan, Alyssa Maye, Britney Milo, Tolulope Olowayo, Mmesoma Onukaogu, Janoi Smith and Gabrielle Williams.

Cooper Union: Seth Evans and Karla Garcia

Penn Praxis Studio: Bhavana Shyamsundar and Zhonghui Tang

Special Thanks: 

4DSOUND: Poul Holleman, Salvador Breed and Aimée Theriot-Ramos; Sarah Arison, Rob Ayala, The Bunker Studio, Jewels Dodson, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning: Leonard Jacobs and Patrick Scorese; Anthony Carlos Molden, Moog Music: Logan Kelly; National Performance Network Documentary and Storytelling Fund, NeON Arts and Beautify NYC, The Painted Bride Art Center: Laurel Raczka; UPenn Praxis Studio: Ellen M. Neises; Aaron Ross, Andrew Ross, YoungArts: Lauren Snelling.