current projects
A selection of projects that are ongoing or currently in development
Double Spaces
Double Spaces is a multimedia concert of compositions created by myself and Heather Barnes in the last year Heather was alive with terminal breast cancer. In a collage of live performance, recordings, creative lighting, and ephemera from our 10-year creative collaboration, the concert reflects on friendship, grief, and what we might gain when we refuse to look away from the hardest moments in our relationships.
Heather Barnes and I were in a long-distance voice and cello duo for 10 years. In March 2020, at 38 years old, Heather was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, and she died 14 months later. In the time between Heather’s diagnosis and death, we confronted a rapidly unfolding future that wasn’t what we expected or dreamed it would be by creating art together and for each other. We were driven by a need to memorialize our friendship and grieve Heather’s diagnosis and coming death.
We composed pieces for each other, recorded stories, made field recordings that captured our lives throughout her illness, and made music from found objects, my cello, and Heather’s voice.
Double Spaces organizes these materials into a concert structured around four music compositions we wrote for each other and a composition by Carolyn Chen.
Late Light by Jennifer Bewerse
Second Light by Jennifer Bewerse
Keepsake by Jennifer Bewerse
This Goes On For Too Long by Heather Barnes
Double Spaces by Carolyn Chen
As a posthumous duet, I will perform live and Heather’s performance will be played as recorded playback. The music will be presented in a 60-minute performance amidst a collage of imagery and art objects from our friendship. The performance’s lighting, spatialized sound, and ephemera will work together to depict Heather's presence despite her physical absence.
This project began in February 2020 and has been developed with support from Los Angeles Performance Practice and Automata Theater.
A Gently Tilting Planet
A Gently Tilting Planet is an immersive 5-channel video installation that enable viewers to see Earth's changing relationship with the sun caused by Earth’s tilted axis.
The installation is comprised of the four Quarter Days (Spring Equinox, Fall Equinox, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice) and their accompanying full moons (Worm Moon, Strawberry Moon, Corn Moon, Cold Moon). Each Quarter Day will be projected onto a wall while the full moons are projected onto the ceiling, completely surrounding the viewer.
I was inspired to create this installation when I realized how disconnected my life was from the natural rhythms of our planet. Regardless of the light outside, my days begin with the sound of my alarm, and the first and last light I see is the screen of my cell phone. In our modern, technology-driven society, advancements like electricity and computers enable us to operate independently from daily light cycles and weather conditions, fostering a widespread detachment from the Earth's natural rhythms. To reconnect with these cycles, I felt the need to visually juxtapose them, making their differences visible.
To create the Quarter Day videos, I have/will film a single landscape view for the complete 24 hours of the day. Each video is then divided into 24 vertical strips, each of which depicts an hour of the day in real time. As a composite, the viewer can see the entire 24 hour cycle of each Quarter Day in real-time over 60 minutes. I'm carefully choosing filming locations for each Quarter Day to highlight diverse climates and landscape changes, including tidal flow, animal and human activity, and shadow movements. The result reveals how dynamic the Earth's movement around the sun is—how much more daylight is in the Summer Solstice compared to the Winter Solstice or how much the sunlight changes throughout the day—while also maintaining its nearly imperceptible change over time.
To create the Moon videos, I have/will filmed each moon as it passes across my camera's view in real-time. Each moon differs in its size, libation, color (from atmospheric changes), and angle as it moves across the sky. NOTE: While this project only incorporates the 4 moons closest to the Quarter Days, I will have filmed all 12 full moons in 2024 by the end of this project.
This project began in December 2023 and will be completed in Spring 2025.
music for your inbox
Music for Your Inbox is an ongoing series that presents micro-curations of music, film, and visual art—creating cross-disciplinary creative dialogue.
Music for Your Inbox’s mission is to connect audiences with art that allows them to move through their feelings and shape their understanding of the world. The art on our series is commissioned from living performers, composers, filmmakers, and visual artists and is available for free at four Los Angeles Public Library Branches, at screenings in Los Angeles, and at home through our monthly programming where subscribers stream art films and receive their own copy of the visual art as a postcard.
MFYI is a 501(c)3 nonprofit and is Co-Directed by Cassia Streb and me. As Co-Directors, we not only curate and run administrative operations MFYI, but we also frequently direct, film, and produce the films alongside artists and as lead-artists ourselves. (Examples of films we have directed are included above.)
Since our founding in November 2020, we have presented over forty music films and visual art postcards. Films commissioned by MFYI have gone on to be featured on the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Vu Symposium, Vectorhack, and The Residency Project. MFYI has received support from the Boston Conservatory Alumni Grant, Eastside Arts Award, Vaccinate All 58 Neighborhood Projects Grant, Puffin Foundation Project Grant, ArtNight Pasadena MiniGrant, CalArts Alumnx Council Seed Grant, Human Resources Time Space Money Residency, LA Area Chamber of Commerce's Bixel Exchange Program, and The M Therese Southgate MD Charitable Trust for Medicine and the Visual Arts.