Piñata Sound System
Exhibitions — 2019/2020
Counterpublic Triennial, Luminary Arts, St. Louis, MO
Monument Lab, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO
State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR.
Piñata Sound System, a mobile and interactive sound system, borrows from the tradition of the amplified soapbox, the sidewalk musician, and other portable audio technologies. Commissioned for the Counterpublic Triennial (2019), the bike’s path marks both the community of Latinx businesses on Cherokee Street in St. Louis and the rich sonic history of Latinx diaspora and migration amplifying mixed fragments of Cumbia that reflected and refracted off the neighborhood. Cumbia, as a culturally expressive form, functions as a vehicle of collective witnessing that plots a history of migration and intercultural contact between African, Indigenous, and European rhythmic and melodic styles.
The bicycle used in the project was left over after the bike-share startup Ofo pulled out of St. Louis to consolidate services in higher performing markets, like Seattle and San Diego. Lime, a similar type of start-up withdrew from the city around the same time. Both companies reported high rates of repair and hundreds of missing bikes as factors in their decision to leave. While Ofo is cited as having donated part of its left-over fleet to the St. Louis-based nonprofit BWorks, the collected refuse of the bicycles remains as a hauntological monument to the failed neoliberal promise of mobility and an on-demand lifestyle.
