The Otolith Group
Endless Shout
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania presents Endless Shout, a multi-artist performance project exploring collectivity and improvisation. Endless Shout asks how, why, and where performance and improvisation can take place inside a museum. Its name comes from a 1994 composition by George Lewis, who was referencing “Carolina Shout” (1921) by James P. Johnson.
Over the course of six months, six participants—Raul de Nieves, Danielle Goldman, George Lewis, Fred Moten, The Otolith Group, and taisha paggett—will oversee an unfolding series of performances and encounters within ICA’s exhibition spaces.
Endless Shout offers improvisation and collectivity beyond music or dance, imagining these techniques as structures for social organizing in public and civic space. The six lead participants—some of whom will themselves perform, others of whom set events in motion—were chosen for their extensive engagement with intermedia projects at a range of scales, and because improvisation, collectivity, and black aesthetics are important touchstones for their efforts. Endless Shout asks how we attend to performance socially, politically, individually, and collectively, and what physical and psychic traces exist before and after the performance’s wake.
Endless Shout will occur in tandem with The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, on view at ICA from September 14, 2016, to March 19, 2017.
