CODE-SWITCH / Dancing to the Music of You

Installation & multidisciplinary performance

CODE-SWITCH is a sound installation accompanying Jeremy Martin’s JUSTAPOSE sculpture series. Where Martin’s sculptures imitate the ways queer bodies are presented and posed in public spaces, I am capturing queer voices and suspending them in time through various electronic processes (freezing, delays, looping, granular synthesis, re-pitching, etc) so that they form their own audible “gallery”. Like Martin’s work, this manipulation of our voices is inspired by the way we code-switch, mask, and transform our bodies in different environments.

During gallery hours, audience members are invited to speak or sing into the microphone and contribute their own stories . Their manipulated voices will re-sound through the installation, acting as their own “sound sculptures”. These same electronic processes and audio elements are incorporated into the improvisational collaboration between Infrasound and ChamberQUEER.

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Dancing to the Music of You (2024) is a multidisciplinary collaboration between a team of queer NYC-based artists and organizations including InfraSound, ChamberQUEER, sculptor Jeremy Martin, sound designer Alex Ring Gray, and lighting designer Madeline Whitesell. It is a synthesis of gallery exhibition, sound-art installation, and musical performance, and was premiered on May 3rd, 2024 at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center (The Center) as part of InfraSound's 2023-2024 Season.

This piece explores the concept of the queer body: what it means to live and work as a queer artist, how we conceptualize queerness through fashion, posture, and movement, and how we build community around our shared experience of queer embodiment. The collaborating artists examine these themes through sculpture, lighting and sound design, and musical improvisation.

This project is supported in part by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2024 Creative Engagement grant through funding from the Howard Gilman Foundation and The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council, New Music USA’s Organization Fund, Aaron Copland Fund for New Music, Figma, and donors from InfraSound’s 2023-2024 Fundraising Campaign.