Organ Marginalia in Quadraphonic Sound

backspace gallery at the art lofts | university of wisconsin-madison | 111 n frances street, madison, wisconsin

removing the poison/god, please help me listen (2024)
33 minutes of audio (looped), the color red
4 channel sound installation with subwoofer

“ORGAN MARGINALIA IN QUADRAPHONIC SOUND is an experience into my research for the past two years on the organ. i have been jokingly and lovingly calling this project organ lore but truthfully, it is marginalia. these are my notes.

i came to the organ because i wanted to find something that i enjoyed about the church after such a disorienting and difficult experience growing up catholic by force. i’m amazed and inspired by the organ as a collaborator in sonic work but what i have found the most interesting is the way that the organ has connected me to others in a way i had never experienced before. it’s fairly easy to start a conversation about the organ with anyone and therefore so many people have gifted me a little piece of the story and the observation of this connection has become an integral part of my research–a craiglist listing emailed to me by someone i only met once, a text from a friend of a youtube video about the oldest organ in the world, so many people telling me about their family members who played the organ, my incredibly kind upstairs neighbor inviting me to organ happenings, a friend telling me about movies that feature organs and helping me love movies once and for all, so many songs, so many stories, so many videos and photos and at this point an infinite scroll list of synchronicities.

this piece is composed of fragments and in some ways it is like a secret code but i invite you to find your own experience in it. hopefully it gifts you a piece of the synchronicity and connection that the organ has gifted me. this quadraphonic installation features four organs. the first organ i ever played–the mills college chapel pipe organ in oakland, the home electric organ that lives in my basement here in madison, the pump organ that lives in my studio on the 7th floor of the humanities building, and grace cathedral’s organ in san francisco where i performed this february as organ accompaniment for OYSTERKNIFE’s mouf//full performances.

I would like to thank my MFA Committee for their support and guidance–Julie Chen, Faisal Abdu'Allah, Douglas Rosenberg, and John Baldacchino. I would like to thank my sound professor Tim Russell for infinite amounts of knowledge, encouragement, support and links to organ things and thank Brian Lucas for the lovely subwoofer. I’d like to thank OYSTERKNIFE and the whole mouf//full cast & crew, my cohort(s), my incredible friends who have supported me throughout my MFA and beyond, my family and obviously, god :-)”

-X

Note: So much of this exhibition is about feeling and presence. It uses four speakers and a subwoofer to move sound around the space and was built specifically for this gallery. The experiential nature of this exhibition makes it nearly impossible to document in a way that it can be understood or experienced by viewing images, videos, or listening to audio of it. A stereo reimagining of this quadraphonic piece is in the works as well as video documentation of this exhibition. You can learn about it here but it would be much better if you came to the next one ;-)