Mediated livestream and venue installation
2021
Program Notes
Swans Lakeless is an intermedia composition woven from experience, myth, and narrative poetry. It gives voice to Odin, a nonbinary amputee and tenant union organizer facing eviction, and organizing a rent strike along with their comrades. These narratives are told abstractly from the non-linear spaces of Odin’s recovery after being physically assaulted by the police.
The story is built around artifacts from an actual false-arrest experienced by the piece’s writer, Shannon Lumpkin, as an initiatory point for creativity. Lumpkin’s autofictive narrative asks: Do legal texts lend themselves to music? Can abolitionist police choirs exist? Is it possible to inspire a militarized force to give up violence for song?
From 2019–2021, Anastasia Clarke, Shannon Lumpkin, and Dawn Felicia Knox worked in parallel processes to develop the sound world, poetry, and visual terrain of the piece by compiling source footage including musical performances, police body cam footage, and performances for camera. In the Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England venue Star & Shadow, Dawn Felicia Knox then projected the video source material onto nontraditional surfaces intercepted by fields of colored light. The resultant film features edited footage of the evolving installation in England interspliced with Clarke and Lumpkin’s source footage. The film was then projected into the Roulette theater, where it was subject to further mediation by a light installation, which was mixed into the livestream broadcast for audiences at home.
This Roulette showing used the empty theater to stage Swans Lakeless as live interaction with fixed media, acknowledging the creators’ intentions to further iterate the work.
Access Notes:
The process for creating, sharing, and discussing this work is informed by SURJ’s documentation on anti-ableism, access and Disability Justice.
The work premiered as a livestreamed event. Closed captioning is available on Roulette’s archive video. A full transcript with descriptions of sound/music is also available on Roulette’s event page.
Credits
Producers
Anastasia Clarke
Shannon Lumpkin
Dawn Felicia Knox
Roulette / Van Lier Fellowship
Music & Sound
Anastasia Clarke, compositions with voice and electronics
Quoted:
Keiko Uenishi, audio feedback performance with tubes
Jean Carla Rodea, voice
Daniel Carter, horns and flute
Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
Sandy Gordon, percussion
Noize Choir, performing The Cave, recorded by Sneha Solanki
Text
Shannon Lumpkin, text
Jaehyun Oh, legal text (adapted by Shannon Lumpkin)
Read by:
Shannon Lumpkin, self, Odin, Bohemian Waxwing
Anastasia Clarke, narration, choir
Video
Dawn Felicia Knox, edited film, source footage
Jon Burklund, source footage
Anastasia Clarke, source footage
Shannon Lumpkin, source footage
Chip Chapin, source footage
The New York City Police Department, source footage
Projections
Dawn Felicia Knox, filmed installation and installation intervention
Star and Shadow, technical assistance
Camilla Padgitt-Coles, consultant – live projections within Roulette
Roulette, technical assistance
Sound Recordists
Anastasia Clarke
Sarah Hennies
Shannon Lumpkin
Dramaturgy
Chip Chapin, dramaturgy
Gayle Fekete, creative consultant
Livestream
Woramon Jamjod, technical director
Benjamin Miller, livestream operator
Roulette
Special Thanks
Roulette
Van Lier Fellowship
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Jacob Fuchsberg Law Firm
Opera House Tenant Union
Crown Heights Tenant Union
Bed Stuy Tenants’ Union
Brooklyn Eviction Defense Network
Grayhaven Motel
The Manse
Michael Kozek, Ween & Kozek
Star and Shadow
Arts Council England
ZANNI Video
them. Magazine + Wren Sanders
Lindsay Duncanson and Marek Gabrysch
This work was supported by a 2020 Van Lier Fellowship from Roulette Intermedium.