Resident Erin Mallea leads a listening workshop as part of the Cicada Chorus project.
Join The Muncie Arts and Culture Council (MACC) for a one-night exhibition and artist talk led by PlySpace Artist in Residence, Erin Mallea. Mallea’s video project, “The Cicada Chorus”, will premiere for a one-night-only public viewing following an artist talk on Tuesday, June 29, at 6:00 pm at PlySpace Gallery. The artist talk will focus on the work Mallea has completed at PlySpace, as well as previous work. “The Cicada Chorus” was created in collaboration with participants from the Muncie Community. This event is free and open to the public, with masks required.
Since joining PlySpace in May, Mallea has collaborated with individuals from the Muncie community as well as the Ball State Environmental Education Center, John Vessels of Ball State Theatre and Dance, Camp Adventure, and Red-Tail Land Conservancy to listen to and observe insect noises in the area. The research and recorded sounds were used to develop a performance video where participants make sounds to imitate a choral insect cacophony. The chorus, and subsequent video, celebrates the particularities of the region’s ecosystem and the often taken for granted “others” we live alongside that are integral to our ecosystem.
Mallea writes: “The chorus is an opportunity for collective close-looking and listening as an entrypoint to playfully, yet earnestly inhabit a non-human sensibility. The chorus has become a collective clock: mimicking the sounds of cicadas shifting from dawn to dusk and spring to summer.”
About the Artist:
Erin Mallea (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist motivated by an attempt to better understand the spaces she inhabits. Collapsing personal, natural, and national history, her work explores the past and present of particular microcosms as metaphors for larger human and environmental conditions. Analytical, meandering, playful, and often public in nature, her work scrutinizes systems of producing knowledge, place, and relationships to nature in the American landscape and manifests in a range of media including video, audio, sculpture, photography, performance, writing, and participatory projects. Mallea has exhibited internationally, advocated for the ethical memorialization of a historic oak tree, and recently sent vibrations from a giant fungus throughout the atmosphere. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, Mallea teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and Carlow University.
More information about the Cicada Chorus visit our website, www.PlySpace/cicada.