Roles: Production and Audio Editing Trainer, Technical Consultant
Collaborators: Génération 1.5 team, CHOQ
Génération 1.5 est un podcast documentaire sur les enfants et les adolescents qui ont immigré avec leurs parents. Il explore les différentes étapes de ce déracinement : la perte du chez-soi et l’arrivée, le choc culturel, les questionnements identitaires et les manières de reconstruire ce chez-soi.
J’ai soutenu l’équipe de production avec des formations en production et montage et du soutien technique.
“L’artiste a centré sa composition autour du vécu des personnes racisées afin de visibiliser ces histoires trop souvent ignorées. Il répondait ainsi directement au thème central de l’exposition : « l’air », élément de l’invisible. Cet air que l’on respire est aussi devenu source de contagion depuis un an. Le recours à la fréquence radio a permis à l’artiste de déjouer la peur de l’autre, la crainte d’une contamination, pour faire de l’air un véhicule d’ondes de vie et de liberté.” -Emmanuelle Jetté
Installation / Performance in articule’s front window
ARTIST’S STATEMENT The face mask is the ubiquitous new hall pass. It protects from infection and insulates the wearer from the fear of what they cannot sense. It is also a physical, social and psychological barrier, a fitting metaphor for the suffocation of BIPOC voices and the invisibilization of their struggles that have redoubled in intensity in 2020, the year of the pandemic, the year we came up for air, gasping. What happens when expression can no longer be stifled? What happens when energies and emotions break their confinement? Parker Mah (Rhythm & Hues) channels these questions in his latest performance work, in which the performer is (all but) captive in his bubble. Music and words reflecting and amplifying the experiences of black and brown bodies find a way to escape through the plexiglass. Microscopically, vibrationally, the air around us quivers with life.
DESCRIPTION A mix of vinyl, samples, live instrumentation, and effects, this piece was performed at 4 random times between November 27 – December 13th for a maximum of 2 hours. An array of instruments, turntables, consoles and equipment were set-up behind the front window space of articule, which gives onto Fairmount street. Surrounded by living room furniture and a disco ball, Parker Mah aka Rhythm & Hues performed a prepared set of meaningfully juxtaposed records, instruments and vocal samples, routed live through a pirate radio signal broadcast extremely locally (50 meter radius) as well as to a boombox positioned outside, to passerby and unwitting radio listeners.
ARTISTS’ STATEMENT Wax (pronounced wakh) means “to speak” in Wolof. This project, a first collaboration between artists Lamin Fofana (Black Studies) and Parker Mah (Rhythm & Hues), catalyzes the collective strength of afrodiasporic presences in time and space, through a mapping of vocal samples lifted mostly from vinyl records. In the airy expanse between utterances lie ghostly traces that make visible the invisible; that speak truth to forgotten narratives.
DESCRIPTION This exhibition produced a second piece, a collaboration between artists Lamin Fofana and Parker Mah, both DJs and sound artists. Lamin had been expected to come to Montreal for the residency but could not due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. This piece developed out of online exchanges and a mutually established creative process.
