Description:

Participants are invited to experience a soundwalk that considers the act of listening as a political practice connected to memory, care, and environmental change. Participants will engage in deep listening in the lakeshore area of the Northwestern campus. The group will begin at Kresge Hall with listening exercises, a presentation of the artist’s work, and a discussion about the histories of soundwalks. Participants will transition to a guided soundwalk to collaboratively listen to the neighborhood and its surrounding environment. The workshop will conclude with writing, documentation and reflection.

Event limited to 20 participants

Meet at the Main Entrance of Kresge Centinnial Hall; walk begins at the Kaplan Seminar Room (Kresge 2351)

What to bring (optional): Personal notebook, journal, or digital device for writing and/or audio documentation.

Leah Ra’chel Gipson is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar based in Panama City, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois. She facilitates hyperlocal, community projects that engage Black culture and imagines critical “call and response” environments. She explores race and gender through family history, popular media, and archives using image, sound, textile, installation, and film. Her practice is rooted in mixed traditions of Black feminism and Black church. Her work has been featured at the South Side Community Art Center, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Netflix, Project
Row Houses, Nawat Fes (Morocco), and the Central Academy of Fine Arts (China). She was awarded a 2024 Creative Capital Award for the Staring at the Dark, a documentary film and environmental justice project.

caption: The artist (not pictured) is listening to mariposas (butterflies) in Michoacán, for the project Black Girlhood Altar, in memory of Ma'Khia Bryant. Image Caption: An orange, black and white Monarch butterfly is partially seen behind plant leaves and vibrant red blossoms. Photo credit: Leah Gipson, 2023