*Please note: This event will be held at Holy Apostles and the Mediator Episcopal Church, 260 S. 51st St, Philadelphia, PA 19139.

In conjunction with Colored People Time: Banal Presents, SCRAAATCH presents Tower of Babel (2019 – ), a site-specific aleatory composition of electronics with projections, movement, and sound sculptures. The artists offer this statement to provide context for the piece:

We (a Black American and a Black African) try to process the breakdown of communication between one another as siblings separated by an ocean and 400 years, meeting here at the end of the world. There is beauty in our attempt to communicate with one another, whether or not the words connect. We also laugh (when we want to) at the futility of communicating our humanity to others. Continuing with our Dadaist and Afro-pessimist impulses, we express all of this through our birthright: sound. Music makes the frustration sweet.

SCRAAATCH is the sound and performance art duo of MHYSA and lawd knows. Originally from Maryland, formed in DC and based in Philadelphia, SCRAAATCH makes sounds fugitive to the club, the web, the street, and the future.

Support

Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan.