In Turning Towards a Radical Listening, James Allister Sprang developed a sculptural sound-based installation over the course of a five-week residency at The Kitchen and the piece had its premiere October 17th-26th, 2019.

Turning Towards a Radical Listening is an immersive metaphor in which an audience is asked to reckon and reconcile with how their sonic experience is represented, documented, given language and transcribed over the course of 70 minutes. The resulting nonsense concrete poem demands consideration of how we exist between input and output— holding space for us to tune into what has been lost in translation.

In an age of information, in which meaning is so often generated through processes akin to machine learning— patterned behavior based on biased data sets— Turning Towards a Radical Listening questions the ways in which language and algorithms shape and even program our lives.

Using spatial sound and recordings from conversations with poets and peers, James Allister Sprang asks: Can we begin to address the chasm between information and knowledge? What happens to black voices when they are translated and transcribed through apps and other modes of technology? And can we hold space for the ways in which these translations and transcriptions reveal racial, gender and social biases that exist beyond our screens? An extension of this project, a visual art exhibition titled Fragment Scapes, was on view at The Knockdown Center November 2nd- Dec 14th, 2019.

James Allister Sprang as Lead Artist/Performer in collaboration with:

Lighting Designer: Ryan Seelig
Associate Lighting Designer: Bona Lee

Spatial Sound Designer and Wave Field Synthesis Engineer: Chloe Alexandra Thompson
Wave Field Synthesis sound processing and spatialization tools: Bobby McElver
Technical and Wave Field Synthesis Assistant: Keenan Hurley
Compositional Elements: Aon
String Quartet Composition (is your land): Julie Zhu

Projection Designer: Matt Romein
Visual API Programmer: Satchel Spencer

Line Producer: Sandra Garner, Lingua Franca Arts

Wave Field Synthesis sound equipment provided courtesy of Bobby McElver and Andrew Schneider; development and construction of Wave Field Synthesis sound equipment originally made possible by Science Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation.

Recorded conversations courtesy of M. NourbeSe Philip, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Tracie Morris, Safia Elhillo, Arielle M. John, Amber Rose Johnson, Sophia Le Fraga, Meg Onli, Raquel Salas Riviera and Sarah Jane Stoner.

Curated by Tim Griffin, Lumi Tan, and Alison Burstein of The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York, NY.

Turning Towards a Radical Listening has been developed in part during residencies at Shandaken: Projects, Storm King, New Windsor, NY; The Fountainhead, Miami; Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York, NY and FringeArts, Philadelphia, PA as well as during workshop showings at The Tank, New York, NY.