Canto De Todes / Song for All

Singer and performance artist Dorian Wood (she/they) exhibits a 12-hour composition and installation inspired by a lyric written by the late Chilean singer and songwriter Violeta Parra. Divided into three movements, this durational work features two hour-long chamber pieces separated by a 10-hour pre-recorded, multi-channel composition mixing a genre-defying canon of folk, pop, and experimental music of Central and Latin America. Redeveloped and re-envisioned in harmony with the Armory’s historic period rooms and specifically honoring the craftspeople that constructed the building at its inception, this Armory commission spotlights timely issues of migration and emphasizes the urgency of folk music as a vessel for social change.

The performance will be accompanied by: a film program about Audre Lorde curated by Michael Gillespie; a multi-channel work featuring the contributions of 10 filmmakers, writers, and orators from throughout the Americas including Génesis Mancheren Ab’äj, Óscar Moisés Díaz, Kenia Guillen, Leslie Arely Martinez, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, and Frisly Soberanis, curated by the film and literary collective Tierra Narrative; and a series of panels in collaboration with the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.

Performers for the chamber pieces include cellists Ethan Philbrick and Adrián Gonzalez Cortes and guitarist Alexander Noice, among others. Participants in panels to be announced.

Canto de Todes / Song for All is a keynote performance of ASAP/15: Not a Luxury, an in-person conference from October 17–19 by the Association for the Study of Arts of the Present.