Empire is a reflection on cycles of power, allegiance, and civilization through the physical remnants of nationalism. The flag forms were derived from colors of the banners of Hungary, the USSR, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, and the USA, including those modified by revolutionary movements. The papier-mâché objects were cast from stones found on the streets of Sofia, Bulgaria. Body casts were made from my foot and a friend’s arm. Petri dishes and flasks growing moss and ivy are placed along the periphery of the room.

The sound played through small speakers mounted inside a cluster of “stones” in a corner is a synthesis of field recordings of bells at Sofia’s Kabanite monument and an altered recording of myself on melodica, playing the exact note of the air sirens that are broadcast every June 2nd in Bulgaria to honor the nation’s independence.

Birds, Bees is a performance that utilizes with amplified objects and live sound pulled from multiple audio technologies. Rooted in the noises and materials of my grandmother's beloved Lowcountry South Carolina, it is a reflection on a place and the passing of time.

Semblance consists of a mirror supported by gold-painted bricks. Attached to the underside of the mirror is an audio exciter connected to an mp3 player. The sound played on the mp3 player causes the exciter to vibrate, and makes the mirror quiver. A blue LED light illuminates gaps in the bricks. Looking at themselves in the mirror, viewers experience an unstable, uneasy feeling. This is caused by the motion of the materials as well as the feeling that the mirror could potentially shatter.

With this work, I am exploring issues of fake versus real in the age of the selfie and cryptocurrency.

Occupational Enterprises is a performance where I rearrange 200 white bricks into a series of 

structures for sixty minutes. Each one is toppled before building another. The sound of the moving, stacked, and collapsed bricks is transmitted by a contact microphone attached to the floor and distorted by a series of effects.

This piece is inspired by several texts as well as personal history. The first, Hito Steyerl’s essay: “Is a Museum a Factory?,” observes that many places where employees worked on factory lines have recently been transformed into sites of artistic labor. Indeed, many cultural institutions and artist studios are in former industrial spaces. The enterprise may seem more glamorous, but the problems are similar. Our forebears were underpaid for laboring long hours in dangerous circumstances. Today’s cultural sector exploits poorly-compensated administrators, unpaid interns, and uninsured artists to produce value at the top of the field. The art world mirrors our society, in which income inequality is exacerbated by a crowd-sourced, freelance economy.

The piece also references my ancestors, who were Italian-American industrial workers. While researching this project, I also read Pietro DiDonato’s novel Christ in Concrete, which tells the story of an Italian immigrant bricklayer who is killed on the job due to unsafe conditions and whose eldest son is forced to leave school to support his family.

All of this provokes questions about how we, as artists, relate to our working-class forbears and contemporaries. Artists might see themselves as free from class, but no matter where we exist on the totem pole, we are either subject to the art world’s hierarchies and unfair systems or become part of the network that perpetuates them. We occupy low-income neighborhoods, due to our need for affordable space, only to become agents of gentrification and class stratification. This performance explores these issues at a time when much soul-searching is needed in the quest for social equity.

Material Actions performance created with video artist Mark Brown. This piece was originally developed for the Dutch Cabinet at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and premiered as part of their 2016 ART/SOUND/NOW series.  It has subsequently been performed at School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, MD.

In this performance I use a series of contact microphones to "play" common, modern materials such as bricks, coins, and a fan. Brown projects a sound-reactive video behind me.

This work considers the economics of the Dutch Golden Age. Each object I use is deliberate. The fan implies overseas trade, the feather symbolizes colonialism, the coins and bills denote the accumulation of capital, and the bricks allude to metropolitan expansion. Continuing the theme of global commerce, Brown synthesizes video imagery of waves and storms that he frames within the scalloped edge of a Dutch porcelain plate.

The works in the Dutch Cabinet we specifically responded to were Vanitas by Adam Bernaert, Breakfast Piece by the Circle of Pieter Claesz, Dutch Ships in High Seas off the Dutch Coast by Ludolf Backhuysen I, and the porcelain vessels from both China and the Netherlands. Imagery from all of these pieces was incorporated into the performance.

Tremor employs a feather, a fan, and a contact microphone. When the fan is switched on, it blows and causes the feather to flutter. The feather is pressed against a contact microphone, which registers any vibration. The microphone is plugged into an amplifier in the corner, and emits the sound of  the shaking feather. It is reminiscent of the flapping of wings. In this work the viewer sees and hears how a seemingly fragile thing can create a large change in the environment.

Flight 1 compares how both humans and birds will relocate in search of shelter. A guitar pickup is clipped onto a fan and plugged into an amplifier. The pickup contains a disc that is sensitive to pressure, so the sound we hear is the fan’s vibrarion. The air and the sound travel through space, alluding to flight paths. The feathers that protrude from the fan further illustrate this metaphor.

Flight 2 grew out of Flight 1. This installation expands the number of fans, pickups, and amplifiers to increase the volume and texture of the audio. Themes from Flight 1 are referenced, but in this setting, the air and sound have a much more menacing intensity that suggests large methods of transport or war.

Sync is a performance created with programmer Dan Zink. Performer Autumn Breaud's heartbeats are transmitted and manipulated live in quadraphonic sound via iPad. Audience members are invited to lie around Breaud as a wave of throbbing, meditative sound washes over them.

A recording of the work is available on Ehse Records.