Site: Yizkor

Who honors the spaces left by the dead? How and why do people, cultures, and identities disappear? 

 

These questions animate Site: Yizkor, an in-process interdisciplinary project created collaboratively by Maya Ciarrocchi and Andrew Conklin that explores the physical and emotional manifestation of loss through text, drawing, video, and music. Its source material includes architectural renderings of demolished buildings, memory maps of vanished places, field recordings, and prose remembrances obtained from historical Yizkor books and from project participants. 

​

Site: Yizkor exists in three modes of presentation; an autonomous multi-channel video/sound installation, an evening-length musical performance in an immersive projected environment, and a workshop where participants are invited to create their own Yizkor pages as a way to mourn and commemorate lost people and places. 

 

Site: Yizkor was incubated by LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture, the Millay Colony and the MacDowell Colony.

Single Channel Sound/Video Installation (9')

Exhibited at 14th St Y in New York, and at the Sichów Foundation in Poland

​

Music composed by Andrew Conklin. Music includes excerpts of an improvised piece by Andrew Conklin, Eli Crews, Matt Nelson, and Sam Ospovat, recorded by Michael Coleman at Figure 8 Studios (Brooklyn, NY).

​

Drawing, animation and editing by Maya Ciarrocchi

Text written by anonymous writers and Maya Ciarrocchi

Readings performed by Haley Boehning, Ari Brand, Maya Ciarrocchi, Andrea Kleine and Deb Travis.

Movement sequences performed by Maya Ciarrocchi, Jason Cortlund, Lisa Sanaye Dring, Julia Halperin, Andrew Ondrejcak, Isabel Sandoval, and Jessica Shi.

Excerpt from a work in progress performance at the Center for New Music, San Francisco, CA on October 6, 2019.

 

Andrew Conklin, composer, vocals, guitar

Maya Ciarrocchi, video, reader

Alisa Rose, violin

Ben Goldberg, clarinets

Lisa Mezzacappa, bass

Jon Arkin, percussion and electronics

Michelle Alexander, reader

Jesse Rimler, reader

Excerpt from a work in progress performance at the Bronx Museum of the Arts Block Gallery on January 10, 2020.

 

Maya Ciarrocchi, concept and direction, video

Andrew Conklin, concept and direction, composition, guitar, vocals

Ben Goldberg, clarinet

Dana Lyn, violin 

Sam Ospovat, percussion

Marques Hollie, vocals

Andrea Kleine, reader

Michelle Levy, reader

Jesús López, reader