Digital image by Alejandro Torres Viera and Luis A. Vázquez O’Neill. Courtesy a canary torsi.
On view in the window of CPR’s administrative offices at 361 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn.
Free and open to the public.
Exorcism = Liberation is a public art project by Yanira Castro / a canary torsi that investigates our relationship to land, self-determination, migration, and climate disaster, and utilizes familiar forms of political media campaigns such as stickers, pins, lawn signs, and handmade banners to immerse the public in sonic experiences. Through collective citywide experiences between NYC, Chicago, and the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts, the American public is invited to imagine alternative futures through the lens of Puerto Rican culture and the U.S.' ongoing colonial history. Exorcism = Liberation is an act of intervention, a rehearsal for collective action during a critical American election.
At CPR, handmade banners with the project's slogans "Exorcism = Liberation", "I came here to weep", and "What is your first memory of dirt?" will be on view on rotation in the window of CPR’s street-level offices, inviting the public to interact with each of three distinct sound works via a QR code which engage listeners in various forms of resistance, embodiment, and memory.
On October 25, a companion program OPEN LAB: What is your first memory of dirt?: Aural Archiving with Yanira Castro / a canary torsi will gather participants’ first memories of dirt in an intimate, analog recording session. On November 5, as part of OPEN HOUSE: Election Night with Crackhead Barney, all three banners will be on display and free pins and stickers will be distributed.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yanira Castro's work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Castro forms iterative, multimodal projects that center land, and the complexity of citizenship and governance in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi. Her recent work includes a performance manual for reckoning, Last Audience, a performance manual; a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future, Last Audience: a performance podcast; and a tea ritual created with four teens from NYC Girl Scouts Troop 6000 to enact the ingestion of home/land, TIERRA. Currently, Castro is developing her ongoing interdisciplinary work, I came here to weep, a collective exorcism for territorial possession. Castro has been commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, MCA Chicago, The Invisible Dog Art Center, SPACE Gallery, PICA, LMCC, The Bates Dance Festival and ICA/Boston. Her work has recently been supported by Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Art, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Marble House Project. She has received two New York Dance and Performance (aka Bessie) Awards for Outstanding Production.