PS PhD candidate Isaac Silber
Performance Studies PhD candidate Isaac Silber will be performing a sonic activation of María-Elena Pombo's site-specific installation, Fuerte Quebracho, on Sunday, September 21st at 3pm.
Fuerte Quebracho is a site-specific installation at an abandoned structure at Fort Tilden, a former U.S. military site on the Atlantic coast. It uses deadstock silk dyed with quebracho fuerte, a tree native to the Gran Chaco region of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia.
Like the ocean at Fort Tilden, the tree’s history is entangled with histories of war. Once employed in leather tanning for military gear, its production was dominated by the Argentina-based British company La Forestal. During the Cold War, competing powers raced to secure it as part of the global contest for strategic raw materials.
The work plays on fuerte’s double meaning, fort and strength, asking which forms of strength endure and which histories remain.
Silber’s sound performance will activate Fort Tilden’s Atlantic water as a resonant speaker, incorporating radio reception, fm transmission, and hydrophonic listening amplified via transduction through a tank of water tinted with Quebracho natural dye. Silber will improvise with this site specific sound system as a practice of environmental attunement - leaning into resonant frequencies, building dissonances and harmonies of feedback, weaving rhythmic interventions into the folds of these kaleidoscopic textures. In dyeing the amplified water with Quebracho Fuerte, the performance will allow for an exploration of the sonic dimensions of the dye permeating the site of María-Elena Pombo’s intervention. All are asked to help collect water from the ocean nearby to add to the resonant tank in the beginning of the performance, and all are invited to take a vessel of dyed water home with them at the end (vessels will be provided on site).
This performance is a collaboration with Golden Monkey Trading Company, the ongoing project of PS Alum Sunmi Yong (MA '19).