About the Event

For this Soundtrack, Joelle Mercedes will present Laboratory (Mars), a sound composition that contemplates Lake Michigan, Roger Payne’s album Songs of the Humpback Whale (1970), and scholar Ochy Curiel’s discussion of the Dominican Republic and Haiti as the entryway of colonization in the Americas. Laboratory (Mars) is constructed from various auditory textures: field recordings of nature, interviews, archival clips, personal field notes, and citations. The work explores and animates the verticality of the museum’s architecture and encourages the audience to consider the production of history in all its slippages. This performance takes place in and near the Kolver Atrium.

Contemporary sound-based artists transform your MCA experience on a select day of the month with custom soundtracks reflecting their perspective of works on view in the museum. DJ sets and bands occupy spaces in the museum as the building itself amplifies their sound constructions.

This Soundtrack is organized by Iris Colburn, Curatorial Assistant, and Otez Gary, Community Engagement Manager, with the Artistic Division and Community Engagement teams.

About the Artist

Joelle Mercedes. Image courtesy of the artist.

Joelle Mercedes is an artist currently residing in Chicago, IL. Their work is rooted in multidimensional collage techniques that produce films, sounds, objects, pedagogy, and drawings that serve as methodologies in stretching origin, impermanence, and history. They have presented in various forms at California Institute of the Arts (Valencia), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, Germany), Lynden Sculpture Garden Gallery (Milwaukee, WI), The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (Chicago), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and TrueQué Residencia (Ayampe, Ecuador).