Pope.L, Choir, 2019

Pope.L: I think one way to talk about Choir using water is, it's all about gravity. I've been interested in gravity for a very long time, and water expresses gravity like no other material. 

And I guess the fact that you know, water takes the shape of the container that it fills or that it's inside of. And, I like the idea that it has this...and this is metaphorical in a way: it sort of goes where it's needed.

There is an aspect of Choir that has to do with social references, or historical references; the use of a fountain from that period of 1950s, having to do with Jim Crow laws, where whites would have one set of fountains and Blacks, another set. And sometimes they were side by side. I still sort of remember some of this from being a child. Yes, in that sense, does water go wherever it is needed? I guess with man's intervention, I suppose not. But, if it was up to water, water would go wherever it was needed. 

When water moves through a pipe, it creates a kind of sound. So, I'm exploiting that through using contact mics on the piping itself. Walking into this room should be like, walking into a puzzle of sound. 

The language there was one of the last things to happen, and I was trying to give the viewer more clues to how to decipher the puzzle of this particular work. Much of the language, if when you see it, is missing letters. In listening to water, one finds that one—at least I do—when I'm listening to it, I sort of go in and out of listening with the water.

What's interesting about water as a sonic object, if I can call it that, is something that has a sound life. Is that there are many pitches in the sound of moving water I should say, especially cascading water, gushing water, even more pitches.

For many people who look at sound—try and record sounds like water—it’s very difficult because of the muddiness, or the fact that pitches in many ways are conflicting. It reminds me of gospel music as I experienced it as a child. It's a weird thing. I'm talking about the kind of gospel music that's not professional—amateur. In small churches where you have a lot of amateur singers, who are not on pitch and the Black church that I grew up in, the audience sings along with the choir. So, you have a lot of people that have a big heart to sing, but they may not have the equipment. As a child you are surrounded by these people. There just singing their little hearts out, and it's all off key and it's wacky, you know? So much energy, and so much lack of technique, but water has that kind of complexity of these really straight forward pictures and then there's a lot of noise, if you will, in the sound, which I appreciate. 

I think there’s a kind of arrogance in using this kind of material in this quantity. I think that in some ways, I'm expressing a kind of privilege in being able to do this. There's a kind of edge to that in the work.