DESCRIPTION OF PIECE

PROMISCUOUS METALS is a multimedia performance piece by Jessica Shand and Alice Zhao exploring the utopian and dystopian promises of intimacy with electronic networks vis-a-vis the elements of air and metal. Foregrounding the promiscuous intimacies among metals’ presence inside musical instruments, electronic hardwares, computers, ornamentations and more, we explore how the libidinal knowledge and affective residues metal holds constitute threads of unlearning while lending alchemical possibilities for lives fashioned outside of liberal personhood.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Both first-year grad students in Music & Multimedia Composition (MMC) and Modern Culture and Media (MCM) at Brown, Jessica Shand & Alice Zhao are united by more than just the letters in their department initialisms. Their work merges metals and sonics under recurring themes of surplus, mess, and chaos, objecthood and mechanization, and corrosion and fabulation—exploring the alchemical, affective, and temporal possibilities for lives fabricated among noise and glitter.