The Resonance Project is a collaboration with the Carleton University Art Gallery to explore the “resonances” between music and art through research-creation, ethnography, performance, and video documentation. Our primary research goal is to develop and test an innovative, community-engaged research-creation methodology suitable for exploring the relationship between music and questions of importance to Canadian society. Adding community-engagement to the already established definition of research-creation is a strategy aimed at decentring its focus on artifacts by considering the relationships among creative processes and their social and cultural effects. How does a focus on the processes of musical creation and performance facilitate critical reflection? How is such knowledge produced through the social dimensions of musical creation and performance and how is this best captured and assessed? How can musicians and researchers work collaboratively and reciprocally across different practices and disciplinary divides?
Funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2020-22) and by a Canada Council for the Arts – Arts Across Canada Public Outreach Grant (2021-22).
Resonance Team: Ellen Waterman (PI), Sandra Dyck (CUAG), Heather Anderson (CUAG). Consultants: Jody Cripps, Ann Cvetkovich, Line Grenier. Research assistants: Gale Franklin, Meg LaRose, Ali Masoudi, Saayeh Ostovar. Thanks to: Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre staff and Carleton University Event Support staff.
Partner: Carleton University Art Gallery
Resonance 1: Envoicing Marginalized Genders and Sexualities
Gabriel Dharmoo and Kathy Kennedy conducting choral improvisation. Photo credit Melanie Mathieu.
Professional and community singers from the LGBTQIA2S+ community co-created vocal and choral music in response to the group exhibition The Baroness Elsa Project (2021) which explored the work of maverick Dada artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Vocal collaborators included Isabella Blaine-Longo, Ashu Bost, Gabriel Dharmoo, and Kathy Kennedy, with participation from Tone Cluster choir, and Qu’ART queer arts collective. A video documentary by SHE Films captures both the research and performance phases of the project.
Resonance 2: Song, Identity, and Signed Music
Jo-Anne Bryan, Alicia Mbesha, Pamela Witcher, and Theara Yim rehearsing. Photo credit Gale Franklin.
Four musicians from the Deaf community were invited to respond to the video exhibition Three Songs by artist Laura Taler. Jo-Anne Bryan, Alicia Mbesha, Pamela Witcher, and Theara Yim practice Signed Music, a musical genre that is entirely visual and kinetic. Signed music researcher and ASL linguist Jody Cripps contributed expertise from a Deaf cultural perspective. Working across a complex linguistic field including ASL and LSQ, English and French, the team explored solo and group songs on intersectional themes of discrimination, alienation, home, strength, and joy in Deaf culture.
In summer 2023, Jo-Anne Bryan, Pamela Witcher, and Theara Yim co-created a signed music piece own-home search-find / chez soi cherché-trouvé. It was documented by SHE Films with Deaf consultants Jody Cripps and Pamela Witcher. The work comprises four films, each a movement of the larger work.
Watch all four movements of own-home search-find / chez soi cherché-trouvé.
Watch our interview with Alan Neal of CBC-Radio 1, All in a Day, Nov 13, 2023 (with ASL-Eng interpretation)