Hold Up Half the Sky
video and sound installation / 4k / color / France & USA / 2021
Link to video: https://vimeo.com/619014849/0afe95c602
Description of work
Hold Up Half The Sky is a sound & video installation, using field recordings gathered while walking in rallies/protests in a handful of international cities from 2014 to the present, especially Paris. The protest footage is shot by holding a camera overhead and recording binaural audio of the protest while walking. The video thus captures images of the sky above, leaving out any identifying images of the protestors. The motion of the camera inscribes the specific materiality of walking in these sites (the terrain underfoot, the jostling of the crowd) onto the footage of the slow, ephemeral, drifting clouds and changing light, eventually to be overtaken by smoke and teargas.
In the installation, depth videos of the sky are projected on the floor to create the impression of a upside-down curved dome, and audio from the in-ear mics is spatialized across the room. The installation draws on painting techniques used to depict the skies in renaissance domes, and 3D video editing techniques for creating experiences of depth. The audio makes use of slight delays and pitch shifting, which the human ear experiences as indications of distance and movement, to create an experience of motion. Our listening undergoes the destabilizing “doppler effect” caused by police sirens – as a sound moves closer and then past us, the perceived pitch slightly changes. Thus fixity of the individual viewer’s stance and perspective is disrupted.
The project inserts motions and struggles toward solidarity and collectivity into visual templates designed for solitude and withdrawal from earthly strife (VR environments, church domes … the gallery space.)
Hold Up Half the Sky was developed in residencies at ProArts (Oakland, California) and the Citè Internationale des Arts (Paris), with support from the American University of Paris Civic Media Lab.
Biography of artist
Jessica Feldman is a sound and new media artist and a researcher. Born in the United States, she lived and worked in New York City for many years before coming to Paris. Her work is concerned with the use of digital technologies to imagine, facilitate, or repress solidarity. Her work is often sited in or engaged with public or non-commercial spaces, and includes sculptures, interventions, sound installations, weird self-destructing circuits, videos, and compositions. Many pieces are site-specific, participatory, and/or interactive, and deal with the relationships among the body, (the) media, and intimate psychological and communal social dynamics revealed by contemporary technics of control, or, alternately, liberation. Pieces have been performed, installed and exhibited internationally at art galleries, museums, concert halls, public parks, city streets, tiny closets, boats, the New York City subways, and the internet. Venues include Kunstraum Niederösterreich (Vienna), WORM (Rotterdam), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), Socrates Sculpture Park, White Box, The Kitchen, LMAKProjects, Roulette, The Stone (all NYC), and many outdoor locations. Her work has received awards from Cité international des arts (Paris), the New York State Council for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Meet the Composer, among others.
Artist Exposition List
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & PERFORMANCES
[solo] A place becomes an escape from time, Aloïse Gallery, Basel, 2022
Wake Words exhibition publication/sound art commission, The Golden Pixel Cooperative @ Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna, 2021
The Right to Breathe, undercurrent gallery, online exhibition, New York City, 2021
Machine Listening: Improvisation and Control, online collaboration between Liquid Architecture (Melbourne) and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, 2021
Wednesday’s Screening, Cité international des arts, Paris, 2020
Hold Up Half the Sky (in progress), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, 2019
Inside Voices, NewHive.com, online, 2016
website with digital audio and video, multiple gallery installations. Collaboration with anonymous incarcerated people.
[solo] caesura: a forum, Marcus Garvey Park, New York, NY. 2015-2016
public, outdoor architectural and sound installation.Collaborative project with architects Jerome Haferd & K. Brandt Knapp.
Presented by NYC Parks Department Public Art Program & Harlem Arts Festival.
PS109 Resident Artist Exhibition, El Barrio’s ArtSpace PS109, New York, NY. 2015
FLUID, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Staten Island, NY. 2015
[solo] The Lag (intimacy for the epoch of time-space-compression): video and sound work by Jessica Feldman. Maison Jandelle, Paris, France. 2014
The Shape of Spaces Yet to Come, Leonardo Music Journal’s album of sound artists under 40. 2014
[solo] Overheard // Jessica Feldman. Sleeping Weasel Cyber Art Gallery, Boston, MA. 2013
[solo] The Glass Sea, Petrosino Square, New York, NY. 2012
public, outdoor sculpture with video & sound. Presented by NYC Parks Department Public Art Program.
EAF12: Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY. 2012
[solo] Jessica Feldman: interactive video and live sound. GASP Gallery, Boston, MA, 2012
Chambers, Zilka Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. 2011
PIXILERATIONS [v.7], FirstWorks Festival, Brown University, Providence, RI. 2010
John Cage’s Song Books, [performer/interpreter], Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY. 2010
FlowSlow River Conference, Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, PA. 2010
Floating World, Building 110, Governors Island, LMCC, New York, NY. 2010
Jessica Feldman, Richard Lainhart and Michael V. Waller, LMAK series, LMAK projects, NYC. 2010
Governors Island Open Studios, LMCC, New York, NY. 2010
ToM: Theater of More, White Box Gallery, New York, NY. 2009
Conflux City, Conflux Festival, New York, NY. 2009
Nightshift III: Backstage, Hudson Guild Gallery, New York, NY. 2009
Sound in the Frying Pan, New York, NY. 2009
Sirens, public sound installation aboard the Lightship Frying Pan, docked in the Hudson River in Chelsea, New York, NY. Commissioned by the Electronic Music Foundation.
continuity, Monkeytown, Brooklyn, NY. 2008
Live & Active, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY. 2008
Music to My Eyes, F.U.E.L. Collection, Philadelphia, PA. 2008
Sound of Emptiness, Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, NY. 2008
Space, MonkeyTown, Brooklyn, NY. 2008
[solo] 8 speakers, 4 languages, 1 amp, Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York, NY. 2008
[solo] thebodyisaportthebodyisaportintomassivedarkness, The Stone, New York, NY. 2007
I am my own hired killer, collaboration with Gisburg, Roulette Intermedium, New York, NY. 2007
The Public Sounds, New York, NY. 2007
Overheard in a group show of outdoor, public sound installations, presented by Roulette Intermedium.
MFA Thesis Exhibition, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, UBS Warehouse, Red Hook, NY. 2007
Jessica Feldman & Kim Young, Roulette, New York, NY. 2007
Final Statement, interactive installation/sound sculpture
Sound Bar, Red Festival, Lula Lounge, Toronto, Ontario. 2007
College Art Association NY Area MFA Exhibition, Hunter College/Times Square Gallery, New York, NY. 2007
The Public Sounds, New York, NY, 2007
Overheard in a group show of outdoor, public sound installations, sponsored by a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
[solo] Jessica Feldman: new work, Roulette @ Location One, New York, NY, 2006
Premieres of: For Beth, Improv with Air (for midi-controlled box fans, electronics and feedback) & Stations (for improvising dancers & responsive radios)
Jessica Feldman & Kabir Carter, The Stone, New York, NY. 2006
Museum of Contextual Amputations (ongoing online project). 2006
Sounds Before the Lamp, Olin Memorial Library, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. 2006
Fluxbox, The Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY. 2006
FLOW, with choreographer Koosil-Ja Hwang, Movement Research Festival, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, New York, NY. 2005
Works & Process, Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, NY. 2005
“for a long time…” Festival of Sound Art, The Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. 2004
The Flux Quartet plays Wesleyan Composers, Crowell Concert Hall, The Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. 2004
Chelsea Waterside Park, New York, NY. 2004
“…in the porches of their ears I pour.” Site-specific, interactive performance piece. Part of a group show organized by The Kitchen.
Self-Portrait, The Kitchen, New York, NY. 2004
COMMISSIONS
2021, Human Use of Machine Error, commissioned by the Golden Pixel Cooperative
2016, Inside Voices, commissioned by NewHive.com
2012, Obol, commissioned by Socrates Sculpture Park
2009, Sirens, commissioned by the Electronic Music Foundation, New York, NY
2008, 8 speakers, 4 languages, 1 amp, for the Nicholas Roerich Museum, commissioned by the Neighborhood Composers Project with funding from Meet the Composer, New York, NY
2006, For Beth, commissioned by soprano Beth Griffith
2001, Baritone Songs, commissioned by Baritone Chris Leake