o o oo
Letter o’s distilled from pages of Água Viva by Clarice Lispector as a sound score to be performed, played, or imagined. Água Viva loosely translates to Living Water. Where does the sound o reside in our bodies?
In the book Water and Dreams, Gaston Bachelard describes the “o’s” of water through a slippage in translation, “the o’s of water (eau), the whirlwinds and the lovely roundness of their sounds.” He continues, “liquidity is a principle of language; language must be filled with water.”
“O is the sound of both praise and dismay. It’s the sound my mouth is always making,” writes poet Claire Wahmanholm.
This installation was part of the exhibition Viscera/Epiphora and was accompanied by a performance by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs with Stephanie Aston and Mindy Ella Chu in response to the visual sound score, programmed by Caroline Partamian.
Also featured in BOMB Magazine, An Address to Absence: Audra Wolowiec Interviewed by Meg Whiteford.
2022
LINK to performance
Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs with Stephanie Aston and Mindy Ella Chu.
Dye sublimation printed sound scores on fabric
48 x 110 inches each (three panels)
2021
Risograph printed score
Audra Wolowiec in collaboration with Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs
8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 100
2022
Player piano with hand-perforated o’s from sound score
5 x 5 inches
Edition of 3
2021