Signs as Sounds: Occupy Wall Street

On November 3rd, beginning at 6:30 pm, current Session artist Christine Sun Kim, will lead Signs as Sounds: Occupy Wall Street, a class in conjunction with The Public School New York.

This class, part workshop and part performance, will take the forms of communication arising from the Occupy Wall Street movement as the starting point for vocal exercises that investigate the sonic materiality of language.

Signs as Sounds will begin with an investigation of the hand-painted sign, which has arguably become an even more powerful form of communication than the voice at Occupy Wall Street. Participants will look at the role of authority and transmission of information in forms of communication occurring in real time across a great accumulation of people and through the media to a broader audience.

All those with an interest or association with OWS—protestors, anti-protestors, observers, police, downtown workers, etc—are invited to Recess to translate their beliefs into painted signs. These signs will be broken down into words and sounds by Kim, who will then lead participants into a series of vocal exercises to tune out taught speech and linguistic machinery.

No performance experience is necessary to join this class. Some sign-making materials provided by Recess; materials donations accepted.

This class is part of Feedback, the artist’s six-part series at Recess. Kim, deaf since birth, will perform auditory investigations that initiate a slippage of audio into visual. Using non-vocal methods of dialogue to form collaborative vision with visitors to Recess and a cast of collaborators, the artist will create multiple aural perceptions through the use of bodies in motion, microphones, delay pedals, and more. The first iteration of this series will take place October 31 – November 4th at Recess.