LISTENING SETTING: Enter Siren / holding space as whole bodied immersion. Place yourself near a body of water—an ocean, a lake, a river, a bathtub, a glass of water, an ice cube, a tear. Feel water’s call. Follow that call. Get closer. Touch the water. The source of all life. Feel her power and generosity. How she is stubborn. Ponder the water within you. Become enveloped. Ululating produces a primal physical and emotional release. It clears the sinuses, lacrimal glands, the skin. We lift our voices in collective sonic embrace. We welcome you. We are joyful for your arrival. We celebrate your return to source. We intend clear paths and good fortune upon you.

   DESCRIPTION: Ululations are improv vocal expressions common to feminine cultures of the global south. They are performed individually and collectively as a kind of vocal applause, celebrating arrival and clearing paths forward. The ululation trill is diverse to geography and reflects political ideologies that govern women’s relative freedom to express and emote. Siren harmonics arise from sonic diversity among geo-specific vocalizations in polyphonic play. While this ancient vocal tradition has moved about Africa, the Middle East and diaspora over millennia of nomadic passages, certain sonic innovations to ululation are uniquely possible within polycultural contexts such as Toronto. The powerful Siren voices combine native ululation practice with professional vocal talent.

    BIOGRAPHY: nichola feldman-kiss is a first-generation Canadian artist of Caribbean (European, Taino, African, Middle Eastern and Jewish) heritage. The artist's process-rich practice is a performative and relational exploration of body and embodiment, identity and autobiography, witness and traumatic memory, statelessness and belonging, empathy and collectivity. feldman-kiss’s finely crafted hybrid media installations critique the colonial paradigm—the violent ingestion of land, resources, peoples and cultures—and ask us to reconsider the hard questions about being conscious social bodies among the tattered boundaries of globalization. Their art and technology innovations and institutional interventions have been hosted by the National Research Council of Canada, the Ottawa Hospital Eye Institute, the Department of National Defence and the United Nations, among others. feldman-kiss has consulted on the development of Canadian new media art research policy since 2001. They hold an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and currently live and work in Toronto.

    - Siren is a vocal collaboration unfolding with gratitude to Lodi Awad (Syria), Valerie Buhagiar (Matla / Canada), Blandine Kan (DR Congo), Memory Makuri (Zimbabwe), Ruth Mathiang (South Sudan), Leila Mosemi (Iran), Roula Said (Palestine / Canada), Mabinty Sylla (Guinea), Maryem Toller (Egypt / Canada).

    - Also, gratitude to Michelle Irving (sound designer).

  © 2020 nichola feldman-kiss. All rights reserved