"Playing the B-sides": A Public Art Proposal for the UC Berkeley Campus, 2020.
This public art proposal focuses on subverting the visual language of the iconic equestrian monument by instead offering a sound-based installation and participatory archive that highlights the histories of various underrepresented minority groups. Our sonic monument takes the form of various satellite kiosks around Berkeley’s campus playing archival recordings at low frequencies producing indecipherable vibrations or “soundscapes” that can be felt somatically. This sound based installation would feature sound stations that play archival material collected from select groups such as: representatives of the Ohlone People, Disability Rights Activists, and COLA 4 All organizers. Through collaboration on the creative production of each archive, our objective is that these groups have greater agency over how their stories, accolades, traditions, and memories of their communities get to be remembered. The archival materials would include a range of genres and mediums ranging from interviews, poetry, recorded documentation, and music. These materials will additionally be made available through downloadable playlists on Spotify. To reimagine these two mechanisms--archives and monuments--- as vital instruments for collective memory, legitimation, and remembrance is to think about history differently, as a co-production of the present and ever-changing vehicle through which to distill our aspirations for the future.
Jenebrith Pastran
B.A., History of Art, 2021
Vidur Maheshwari
B.S. Computer Science, 2021
Liam Chok
B.S. Society and Environment, 2023