Ground, Unsettle, Surround:

(Establishing a Sound)

Exhibition — 2020

Acoustic Resonance, Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, Portland, ME.

Ground, Unsettle, Surround (Establishing a Sound) is the first in a trilogy of works expanding upon conceptualizations of “sonic territorialization” or the process by which sound, as theory and practice, announces settler authority as well as liberation within a site and landscape. Ground, Unsettle, Surround reflects on sonic social life as it is articulated through the soundscape of police repression, sonic insurgency/resistance practices, and the multivalent auditory world of privatized space. Ground, Unsettle, Surround presents listeners with a 30 minute sound collage composed of field recordings, dialogues, original instrumentation, and a sound piece by Autumn Chacon that plays from a series of standing speakers surrounding an empty lectern positioned on a shallow rotunda.

After the exhibition, a stereo version of the work’s audio was released as a fundraiser for Chi-Nations Youth Council in Chicago.