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Indepth Arts News:
"Seattle Immigrants Given Visual Voice in Mixed Media Installation"
2001-04-03 until 2001-05-31
Jack Straw Foundation and New Media Gallery
Seattle, WA,
USA United States of America
The Jack Straw New Media Gallery
presents Heard Said, a unique installation of sound
and sculpture by Stuart Keeler. Heard Said was
created as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support
Program. Keeler's project focuses on the personal sounds and
stories of immigrants and combines his sculptural work
with a sound design based upon interviews he conducted
with 'Resident Aliens.' These immigrants live for the
most part in Seattle. 'By removing the body, the voice
and every audible nuance, pause and pitch become
catalysts. Language and voice are the abstracted
portrait experience of an anonymous non-native
speaker.'
Keeler interviewed and recorded the voices of
immigrants from over 20 countries spanning the globe,
including China, Russia, Greece, Slovakia, Ghana and
Thailand, among others.
Ranging from compacted thought forms held within the
air of Ellis Island, ambient walks in Prague's Jewish
Cemetery, a line of 34 people in front of the INS
(Immigration and Naturalization Services) building at
6am, to the poetics of the Ebonics of a first
generation American-Ethiopian, Keeler sought to create
a composite portrait of language and how it holds and
separates the American experience.
Set to the humming frantic rhythm and chorus of the
urban realm, the white noise of the world city
experience becomes a backdrop. ìThe ambient
abstractions of world language tie American World
together. The immigrantís experience within the
context of INS Democracy is fascinating and shocking,
as much it sometimes operates on the other side of the
looking glass of our American Democracy. In this work,
the thread of immigration and arrival to My Country
ëTis of Thee is personal, but remains private and
anonymous.î The anonymity of heard said binds
singularly through a common sense of removal.
Keeler sees Heard Said as an experience that uses
sound and language as a multiple in the
studio process. Fragments of voice, syntax and sigh
are the tools for statement - to activate the viewer
with impulse and memory, to trigger brain connections
to private personal experiences. Keeler used his own
immigration experience as the genesis for this work.
ìI ask the observer to challenge assumptions of
identity and belonging, to witness another ñ caught
between two worlds of belonging and never really
belonging.î For many North Americans, language is not
a divider and immigration has never been an issue;
Keeler hopes that Heard Said will open their eyes.
Stuart Keeler was a participant of the Jack Straw
Artist Support Program which is supported by the King
County Arts Commission, the Seattle Arts Commission,
the Washington State Arts Commission, the National
Endowment for the Arts, PONCHO, Corporate Council for
the Arts, the Allen Foundation for the Arts, and
individual contributors.
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