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announcement
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ARTISTS: Naomi Woo (Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra) and Sophie Seita (Boston University)
Naomi Woo a pianist, conductor, and researcher, currently working as assistant conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and lecturing at the University of Manitoba. Her PhD in Musicology, from Cambridge University, used methodology from literary criticism, queer theory, performance studies, and auto-ethnography to explore the idea of “impossible performance” in piano etudes by composers including John Cage, György Ligeti, and Nicole Lizée. She has shown interdisciplinary performance work at venues including Somerset House (London), Kettles Yard (Cambridge), and Kunsthalle Darmstadt, and performed as a pianist at Carnegie Hall. She collaborates frequently with artists, choreographers, and composers, including Sasha Amaya, Teppei Higuchi, and Sophie Seita. www.naomiwoo.com
Sophie Seita is a writer and artist who often thinks about how text and the act of reading can be embodied and/or translated into movement, material, sound, and space. She’s performed or exhibited her work at [ SPACE ], La MaMa Galleria (NYC), Printed Matter (NYC), Bold Tendencies, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Arnolfini, JNU (New Delhi), Art Night London, Kunsthalle Darmstadt (Germany), Queer Art Projects, and elsewhere. She’s the author of, most recently, My Little Enlightenment Plays (Pamenar, 2020) and Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little MagazineCommunities from Dada to Digital (Stanford UP, 2019), and the editor of The Blind Man reprint (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017), named one of the Best Art Books of 2017 by the New York Times. Following her post-doc at Cambridge, she’s currently an Assistant Professor at Boston University and co-organises the Sound/Text seminar at Harvard. In 2020-2021, she’s part of the Constellations social practice artist development programme run by UP Projects and Flat Time House; an artist mentor at Rupert (Lithuania), and an Eccles Fellow at the British Library, working on a new book of creative non-fiction called Lessons of Decal. www.sophieseita.com
Between lecture-performance and love letter, Beethoven Was A Lesbian is an homage to Pauline Oliveros in extravagant temporal drag. Through playful dialogue, promiscuous citation, and interactive meditations, the performance seduces the tropes of classical music in order to dominate them. Performers conduct and are conducted, listen, flirt, sing, play, recline, read, die tragically, and bask in the soprano’s voice.
Originally a live performance, in 2020, Sophie and Naomi have translated the work into an experimental radio opera and mail art project.
The Sound/Text event will include a listening session, followed by a conversation with the audience.
How to Join
Please add you name and email address to this registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing Zoom link and a passcode to the event.
