Here is something to listen to as you peruse the site.
This website acts as a repository for the public’s collective engagement with a canary torsi’s Last Audience: a performance manual, a project in partnership with Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
You can purchase the manual here.
This website contains digital content for use by the public to enact performance scores in the manual. And it serves as an index of photographs taken by the public of the aftermath of their experience in performing the scores, keeping a record of the collective imagination.
With Last Audience: a performance manual, the Bessie-award winning collaborative, a canary torsi, reimagines performance for an era of social distance. Delivered in the mail as a series of printed manuals or digitally as a PDF, "Last Audience: a performance manual" transforms audience members into performers in their own homes, guided by the artists’ voices through rituals of mercy, judgment, communion, and blessing. As participants stage their own interpretation of the artwork, they become both witness and creator, giver and receiver in an at-home performance of reckoning and transformation.
By acting as an archive for the public’s submissions and performances created, lastaudience.com can be considered a portrait of the people that gathered, made and performed Last Audience.
Who are we when we’re in a community? How do we assemble in today’s faltering democracy? What is our responsibility to judge, liberate, and have mercy on others? How do we move and make choices as a group, separated by physical and cultural distance? How can we reimagine the intimacy of theater for a new future?
Bio
a canary torsi is a Bessie-award-winning, interdisciplinary group of artists formed by Puerto Rican artist and choreographer Yanira Castro. Largely rooted in performance, their work examines the encounter between spectator and event and investigates questions related to public convergence, the nature of proximity and space, as well as the cultural, social, historical, and personal dynamics that influence how meaning is formed and how power is structured. Ranging from immersive performance environments to responsive video installations and online archives, a canary torsi develops scenarios where the work is built as a communal act.
Credits
Concept, Direction & Original Scores by Yanira Castro
Manuals Written, Compiled and Designed by Yanira Castro & Kathy Couch
Additional Writing Contributed by Leslie Cuyjet (Warning), devynn emory, Pamela Vail, David Thomson
Audio & Video Performed by Yanira Castro, Kathy Couch, devynn emory, David Thomson
Music and Audio Design by Stephan Moore
Video by Peter Richards
Website Management by Leslie Cuyjet
Website Design by Fei Liu
Photographs by Simon Courchel
Performance in photographs by Leslie Cuyjet, Kirsten Michelle Schnittker
Costume in Warning by Miodrag Guberinic
Project Coordination by LD DeArmon
Dramaturgy for performances by Susan Mar Landau
MCA Credits
January Parkos Arnall, INTERIM SENIOR CURATOR + David Badesch, AUDIO VISUAL TECHNICIAN + Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, DIRECTOR OF CONTENT STRATEGY + Paul Deuth, AUDIO VISUAL MANAGER + John Gustafson, ASSISTANT STORE MANAGER + Kendall Karg, PRODUCING DIRECTOR + Paul Knipper, PRODUCTION DESIGNER + Laura Paige Kyber, CURATORIAL ASSISTANT + Tyler Laminack, EDITOR + Elyssa lang, RIGHTS & IMAGES ASSISTANT + Bronte Marsteller, WEB CONTENT MANAGER + Greta McGuire, PRODUCTION DESIGNER + Georgie Morvis, SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR + Rich Norwood, PRODUCTION MANAGER + Katy O’Malley, MANAGER OF MEDIA RELATIONS + Abraham Ritchie, SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER + Melissa Roels, MARKETING MANAGER + Bonnie Rosenberg, MANAGER OF RIGHTS & IMAGES + Matt Sharp, PRODUCTION COORDINATOR + Alexander Shoup, WEB DEVELOPER + Michelle Silverblatt, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF MARKETING + Matthew Test, AUDIO VISUAL TECHNICIAN + Casey VanWormer, TICKETING SYSTEMS MANAGER + Anne Walaszek, COPYWRITER + Anthony Williams, COORDINATOR + Tara Aisha Willis, ASSOCIATE CURATOR + Christine Zavesky, SENIOR DESIGNER + Steve Zirbel, RETAIL MANAGER OF ONLINE SALES. DESIGNED BY Paul Knipper WITH Christine Zavesky