The Call in the Limitless Space
A Sound Installation by Mary Edwards
The Call in the Limitless Space comprises a collection of short, recorded reflections from people in the Wa Na Wari community who reflect on themes of spatial reclamation, Black Joy and belonging, specifically to their ancestral lineage or connection to Seattle's Historic Central District.
These recordings will be digitally ported into a vintage telephone booth which will serve as a permanent, interactive installation for Wa Na Wari. The stand-alone recordings will also provide a soundscape for listening components of the ASAP/14: Arts of Fugitivity Conference.
On August 21st, the artist will be facilitate a soundwalk and workshop where participants will engage in what will be, at once, an ecological practice, a method of inquiry, a call to action, and a guided meditation on reclaiming natural and architectural spaces through resonant humming and a call-and-response of place-naming as an invocation, helping to give a voice and harmonic convergence to something that is already there, yet calls for “unearthing.”
Participants will be asked to consider any creative responses and expressions that further acknowledge and contribute to the community’s sense of recollection and restoration.
On August 25th, the project will culminate with a live performance, with a text score drawn from this deep, active listening. All are encouraged to participate regardless of background or ability in sound practice.
To Participate
Use one of the following five statements to help you structure and create your 90-second recording. Please make your responses specific to your relationship to Seattle’s Central District (The CD).
When you are ready to share your reflection, call 206-485-7563 and leave your 90-second recording after the tone.
1. Define Black Joy.
2. Name and describe a specific physical space (eg. on your land) where you feel most inspired.
3. Name something from which you draw your greatest sense of emotional strength.
4. Describe your intention for reclaiming or restoring tradition.
5. Name a creative expression that represents joy.
Then…
Soundwalk (Monday, August 21st, 6pm): Further sounds will be gathered during a Central District Soundwalk where participants will engage in what will be, at once, an ecological practice, a method of inquiry, a call to action, and a guided meditation on reclaiming natural and architectural spaces through resonant humming as an invocation, helping to give a voice and harmonic convergence to something that is already there, yet calls for “unearthing.”
Workshop (Monday, August 21st, 7pm): Additional reflections, words/keywords, and ideas drawn from the soundwalk’s deep, active listening will be incorporated into a text score (as an entry point for anyone to participate in musical activity, regardless of background or ability) for live performance. Participants will be asked to consider any creative responses and expressions that acknowledge and contribute to the community’s sense of recollection and restoration.
Artist Talk (Thursday, August 24th, 6pm)
Live Performance and Unveiling of Phone Booth Sound Installation (Friday, August 25th, 7pm)
Mary Edwards is a composer and environmental sound artist whose practice encompasses installations, film scores and performance. Themes of temporality, impermanence, nostalgia and the natural world recur throughout her work. She is å in the invisible architecture and the emotive, historic, cinematic and spatial properties of sound. Listening is an inherent and integral part of her process in conveying how all sounds have the potential to be habitable, and can be transformative once you get inside them, as they are simultaneously intimate and immense.
Her recent projects include Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place, an ode rather than elegy to the transforming Arctic landscape. It comprises a composition and ambient field recordings she gathered from landings around Svalbard, Norway while on a sailing expedition on a research vessel above the 78th parallel. It documents the sound properties of glacial geology and oceanographic data, intended to provide access for all through sonification by “de-centering the centered and un-othering the others”; Fathom, a site-related soundscape launched during the 2023 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) Conference, Listening Pasts/Listening Futures and Conservation/Conversation, both for Atlantic Center for the Arts; Endeavour: A Space Trilogy for the NASA Expedition of Dr. Mae C. Jemison; Everyday Until Tomorrow, a conceptual “Library Music” soundtrack for TWA Terminal 5 at JFK airport; Something to (Be)Hold, a permanent large-scale public sound work produced by The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery concurrently with her first career survey; and Tamalpais Higher, a geophonic reimagining of a seismic event based on a blind thrust fault running through Mount Tamalpais north of the San Francisco Bay.
She holds an Interdisciplinary MFA in Sound and Architecture from Goddard College and has been awarded residencies at the ACA Soundscape Field Station at Canaveral National Seashore, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Arctic Circle, The William T. Davis Nature Conservancy and InSitu. Her commissions include works for Invert/Extant, The Beach Institute Savannah, The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Foundation, 429 Architectural Spaces, Condé Nast Gallery and The Joshua Tree Cultural Preservation Center.