Throughline
Hi! This is Bryce from FLYDLPHN :) I’ve been super excited to be a part of this project since we first sat down and dreamed it up well over a year ago. Being a group of close friends our rehearsal and improvisation process is extremely fun and collaborative.
For me collaboration has always been an essential part of my foundation for art making. I love the new ideas and perspectives that can come about working on a project in conjunction with other creatives. The whole is more often than not greater than the sum of its parts. Collaborating allows us to lean on our own strengths while also allowing us to learn from others and grow. The outcomes from my collaborations have always had a complexity and depth that would be impossible to be achieved individually.
I wanted to share one of my favorite collaborations, Throughline. I produced this project for a competition in 2020, during the summer right after the pandemic. The premise for the competition was to create a video recording of a piece of bassoon music by a BIPOC composer with some element of another art form. I reached out to my favorite artists studying with me at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. It was initially a challenge to learn to work over zoom, but actually lent itself well due to the digital nature of this project. We had a handful of visioning meetings and then set off to craft our mediums. Anna Shepard brought her poetry, Izzie Queers painted and the editing was done by Alexia Catenazzo. I hope you enjoy!
link to video, poetry below
Our interstates are made of all darkness now, our bodies all question. Even in the daylight, it’s a setting not quite subliminal, but still indiscernible. At an Elloree Exxon, a girl rolls over in the backseat of her mother’s Toyota for a better view of her new nightmare. Veins or highways, bruises or birthrights, these new lines an abstract expression on the old blank canvas of her thighs. Haven’t you ever, waiting for the sign signalling your exit, feared that somehow, despite your attentiveness, you already missed it? Or rather, the sign will never come? You watch the crass cut of power lines into fragile pine and wait for something to stick. Strange concept, exit, as if this corporeal portal has a door our anxiety can walk out of. As if the slow dissolution of our forestry into forgetting has somewhere else to go. Here, I meant to tell you they were only stretch marks. Meant to add in some sort of apocalypse comfort. Meant to tell you it’s okay to wait and wait for truth, to watch a 4 AM sky melt into the color of ice, and still end up with fear.
throughline of blood
and root
the map to the end of these days
