James Allister Sprang

Aquifer of the Weave was a 45-minute audiovisual experience featuring a monumental weaving of cyanotypes and immersive sound, both made to cocoon a turning inward. This work was made for ten audience members at a time.

“Sprang has dubbed Aquifer of the Weave a work “written and woven by many” for the collectivity and shared commitment that shaped it. It is a testament to what is possible when we attune ourselves to the life-giving potential of each other’s presence.”

—Ade J. Omotosho, Contours of the Score, Curator

“James Sprang’s Aquifer of the Weave, a performance installation, enlarges and updates the notion of tapestry. Sprang orchestrates a tapestry of all the senses: 4DSound in dialogue with light that guides us through a durational experience of a wall piece created by hand in community. The experience of the totality of the piece was like weather, moving me into an alert, moody, natural, dynamic modality—where light and time and sound are sewn together non-hierarchically in a palette of visual empathy.”

—Annie B. Parson, Choreographer

“In the stillness and blue, you lead yourself up the ramp to the dock, an elevated T-shaped platform that sits at the base of the installation. It’s here that you find your seat, your viewing angle, your vessel. Set up as an intimate experience, you find yourself amongst only a handful of souls, each with a direct line of sight to the suspended weaving before you. Crinkled and towering high above the audience, the presence of the tapestry defies the simplicity of the paper and plain weave structure that it’s made of. For the next forty-five minutes, it is on this surface–all at once a sculpture, a textile, a theatrical set, a screen, a raft, a living breathing being–that the performance is transcribed onto, transforming it into a material of both physical and psychological projection. As the sound begins and the lights slowly flicker, the trance that ensues elicits the feeling of a one-to-one performance.

Generated through a highly involved process, Sprang’s textured composition is citational poetry assembled from audio samples and quotations from various authors, theorists, and important cultural figures. While the vocals are solely that of the artist, there is a sense of listening to a chorus through Sprang’s recitation. The spoken words and complex soundscape are a collective voice of trauma and resilience. In this way the piece takes on a social dimension, becoming, as the multimedia artist Camille Norment refers to it, “psychological noise.” Defined by Norment as “the examination of socio-cultural phenomena through sound and music, and the contexts in which they are produced,” this term could not be more apt. Aquifer of the Weave presents layered histories while simultaneously eliciting critical self-reflection in the contemporary moment. Parallel to the experience of the large-scale installation itself, which shifts from an opaque, dense object to a semi-transparent, loosely flowing structure, Sprang offers an ever-shifting decentralized narrative. In the presence of this work, you receive its message while being asked to yield your own to its force.”

—Mev Luna, Artist and Assistant Professor at The New School

CORE COLLABORATORS

Marie de Testa: Set Designer and Architectural Intervention
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew: Lighting Designer
Michael Alexander Hernandez: Sound Supervisor
Sandra Garner: Line Producer / Production Manager
Jasmine Lynea: Documentary Filmmaker
4DSOUND: Sound Consultancy and Specialized Software

MUSICIANS

Mathis Picard: Keys
Rafiq Bhatia: Guitar
Jake Goldbas: Percussion
James Allister Sprang: Modular Synthesis and Producer
Brendan McGeehan: Recording and Mixing Engineer

Construction of cyanotype weaving led by James Allister Sprang, included:

Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning / Beautify NYC cohorts: Nakib Abedin, Nazier Alexander, Teniola Bakare, Anabil Biswas, Prama Biswas, Caitlin Charles, Kiara Gabour, Sade Garrick, Prophet Green, Mosuir Jabir, Shaba Jahan, Alyssa Maye, Britney Milo, Tolulope Olowayo, Mmesoma Onukaogu, Janoi Smith and Gabrielle Williams. 

Cooper Union: Seth Evans and Karla Garcia Penn

Praxis Studio: Bhavana Shyamsundar and Zhonghui Tang 

SPECIAL THANKS

4DSOUND: Poul Holleman, Salvador Breed and Aimée Theriot-Ramos; Sarah Arison, Rob Ayala, The Bunker Studio, Jewels Dodson, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning: Leonard Jacobs and Patrick Scorese; Anthony Carlos Molden, Moog Music: Logan Kelly; National Performance Network Documentary and Storytelling Fund, NeON Arts and Beautify NYC, The Painted Bride Art Center: Laurel Raczka; UPenn Praxis Studio: Ellen M. Neises; Aaron Ross, Andrew Ross, YoungArts: Lauren Snelling.