How to assemble

Music

How to assemble a…

by Carolyn Chen

Performance

Tal Allweil, Richard An, Jessica Basta, Xenia Deviatkina-Loh, Joanna Wallfisch, & William Roper

Art Print Postcard

How to assemble… a future

by Seren Sensei

about the art

Two years into a pandemic, communities all over the world have been in a near constant process of questioning, deciding, and reevaluating how to safely gather. How do we assemble? It’s a question that composer Carolyn Chen asked playfully in her 2015 composition, How to assemble a… , where six performers read a collage of instructions for how to assemble a cake, a bicycle, a saxophone, an emergency preparedness kit, a business team, and a computer. This month’s performance film recasts Carolyn’s piece within the context of social distancing and community gathering, taking us through a series of episodes that confront and explore the different ways that we have tried to assemble and re-create social assembling over the past 21 months. 

The visual artist for this month is filmmaker, cultural critic, and activist Seren Sensei who responds to the question “How to assemble” with an artistic reimagining of a paper fortune teller toy. Titled, How to assemble… a future, Seren’s piece juxtaposes the childhood experience of hopefully dreaming about the future with adult contemplations about the future, which are oftentimes accompanied by a sense of dread, especially after the last several years. This video and art pairing allows us to reflect on what our communities have been through and ask ourselves, where we are going next?