Swan Song









Swan Song
2015-2016
society, video, brick, paper
variable
See the singing parts of interviews
Swan Song was a community engagement project through which I focus on a business community along San Pablo Ave in Berkeley and collected interviews and songs. I asked business owners how they came to the neighborhood and to sing a song for what they had lost in their lives. In this version of installation, I collected cardboard boxes from their businesses, and bricks which would construct and protect us, but were in the process of demolition and reconstruction.This project is still in the process of developing into a performance. The neighborhood along San Pablo Avenue was once populated predominantly with African Americans, then accepted immigrants. Now they are experiencing gentrification and a lot of young professional from IT industry are moving in. Everybody experiences changes and loss which transform our lives significantly. Many times such experiences are accompanied with music like someone sitting right next to you. Then later such music start representing those experiences. A community goes through the same, and I want to collect songs that poetically represent the experiences of a community.