![[Image Description: Jerome Ellis playing the sax in a green and pink graphic with event details that read, “Eyebeam Assembly: Conceptualizing Silence & Intimacy with Jerome Ellis and Alice Sheppard. April 20, 2020. 6:30-8pm] Photo credit: Dave Tavani](https://www.eyebeam.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/jerome-02-2-1280x1280.jpg)
Eyebeam Assembly: Conceptualizing Silence and Intimacy
Monday, April 20
6:30pm-8pm (virtual doors at 6:15pm)
This online event will be captioned, ASL will be provided by request
Responding to this moment of “social distancing” and recognizing the limits and implications of language and technology, artists Alice Sheppard and Jerome Ellis use concepts of silence to invite participants into a moment of care and introspection.
Using video conferencing as a platform and internet connection as material, the artists will open a space to consider the nuances of silence as generative, not as the absence of input, but a changing relationship to one’s environment. How do we appreciate solitude in its capaciousness, how do our embodied identities influence how we experience this time, and in the urgency to connect —what material circumstances might become obscured or brought into focus?
Recognizing also that some of us are quarantined alone, some of us with children, partners, family, or roommates, during the course of the evening, we will invite you to create an experience of silence–whatever that means for you– and share it with us.
Accessibility:
This gathering will take place over Zoom and Open Captions will be provided. ASL will be provided by request. To request ASL or other access accommodations or questions, please indicate in your RSVP registration, or contact [email protected] by April 17th. RSVPs will close 30 minutes prior to the start of the event. This event will be recorded for archival and access purposes and posted to Eyebeam’s Youtube page.
Artist bios
A former professor of medieval English, choreographer and dancer Alice Sheppard trained with Kitty Lunn and was a core company member with AXIS Dance Company. Alice is the founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, a project-based ensemble, working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology to create transformative art and advance the intersectional disability arts movement. A USA Artist, Creative Capital grantee and Bessie Award winner, Alice creates movement that engages intersectional disability arts, culture, and history to challenge conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and such journals as Catalyst.
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJerome Ellis is a stuttering, Afro-Caribbean composer, performer, and writer. His current practice explores blackness, music, and disabled speech as forces of refusal and healing. Jerome’s work has been heard at the Poetry Project, Sotheby’s, Soho Rep, and WKCR. He’s a 2019 MacDowell Colony Fellow, a writer in residence at Lincoln Center Theater, and a 2015 Fulbright Fellow. Jerome collaborates with James Harrison Monaco as James & Jerome. Their recent work explores themes of border crossing and translation through music-driven narratives. They have received commissions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ars Nova.
