Close Quarters
Close Quarters (2019) is a 12-channel sound installation. In each of the four corners of the Elden Sculpture Garden at the Smart Museum of Art, a different voice speaks of bodies that nearly but never quite touch in an erotics of the imminent or the afterglow. These furtive voices are also radically filtered to present their highest and lowest frequencies on other widely separated loudspeakers in the open courtyard, casting audible shadows of the mouths. Walking through the space, the upright listener’s body encounters these voices and their verbal shadows coming from the ground up: supine, imbedded, and earth-bound.
Voices: Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Jill Daly, Bruce Jenkins, and Kerry James Marshall
Recording engineer: Ralph Loza at Experimental Sound Studio
Digital playback programming: Eduardo Rosario
Commissioned by the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago for The Chicago Sound Show September 27–December 29, 2019, curated by Laura Steward and Sam Pluta.