ERIN MALLEA - 2021 SUMMER RESIDENT

Erin Mallea (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist motivated by an attempt to better understand the spaces she inhabits. Collapsing personal, natural, and national history, her work explores the past and present of particular microcosms as metaphors for larger human and environmental conditions. Analytical, meandering, playful, and often public in nature, her work scrutinizes systems of producing knowledge, place, and relationships to nature in the American landscape and manifests in a range of media including video, audio, sculpture, photography, performance, writing, and participatory projects. Erin has exhibited internationally, advocated for the ethical memorialization of a historic oak tree, and recently sent vibrations from a giant fungus throughout the atmosphere. Based in Pittsburgh, PA Erin teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and Carlow University.

Human Cicada Chorus - Project Description

In May and June 2021, Brood X of 17 year cicadas emerged throughout Indiana. Inspired by the buzzing, whirring, and chirping of cicadas and other insects during the late spring and summer, Erin collaborated with community members to listen to and observe insect noises in the area and develop a performance as a choral insect cacophony. The chorus celebrated the particularities of the region’s ecosystem and the often taken for granted others we live alongside that are integral to our ecosystem. The chorus was an opportunity for collective close-looking and listening as an entrypoint to playfully, yet earnestly inhabit a non-human sensibility.

The project included a series of free workshops to help prepare participants for the culmination of the project: an outdoor video shoot of the choral performance. The video premiered in Muncie in late June as a celebration of the Brood X emergence and a thank you to all chorus participants who made the work possible.

Find the full list of workshops on our website at plyspace.org/cicada.