Performance
1000 Whispers from Our Future was first presented as part of the
Audium Theater 25-26 Artist Residency.
The show was extended twice and ran for a total of 2 months, selling out the final month of shows.
The spatial sound performance, composed for 176 speakers is paired with an art exhibit and installation presenting painting, sculpture, and visual projections reflecting the arc of the composition in physical form.
This work pulls from Pat Mesiti-Miller’s near-decade of work inside California prisons and features the sounds of the physical structures of incarceration, the people living within them, and the power of our collective imagination and spirit.
Central to the piece is a collection of whispers recorded during a series of community visioning events where participants were asked to share their visions of a new world. The whispers become guides as they float over gritty textures, materialize, and expand before returning to the echoic ether. Woven together through experimental sound and song, this composition guides the listener through three realms: The Realm of the Concrete, The Realm of Transcendence, and The Realm of Spirit.
This project examines the world we’ve inherited, most notably the US carceral system, its connection to global struggles for liberation, and the unwavering desire for the human spirit to be free. It explores the abolitionist principle: as we dismantle systems of harm and oppression, we must also imagine new ways of being, and join in building them together.
