Artist Terry Berlier and composer Sarah Hennies are collaborating with The Living Earth Show to create A Kind of Ache, an installation and concert-length work that “deconstructs, reconstructs, and queers everyday objects to investigate the possibility of creating queer space.”
Connected by a fascination with what they term “queer objects” – beginning with discarded pan lids and small thrift store hand bells and evolving into other objects, forms and sounds — Berlier and Hennies will collaborate in bringing these and other percussive objects together for the first time in a new installation and join an ensemble for performance, composed of themselves with Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews, the musicians who make up The Living Earth Show.
Berlier will be responsible for the conception and construction of the sound sculptures and the visual aesthetics of the performance. The four performers will explore the sculptures together through improvisation and experimentation. Then, Hennies will use these improvisations as the basis for a concert-length piece.
For over 24 years, Terry Berlier has been an artist and educator, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Working primarily in sculpture, Berlier uses sound and kinetics to locate and disrupt the shaping influence of home, culture, and history through a socially committed lens, incorporating humor to disarm, surprise, and engage the viewer.
The Living Earth Show works on ambitious and genre-bending projects, pushing the boundaries of technical and artistic possibility while amplifying voices, perspectives, and bodies that the classical music tradition often has excluded.
Artwork: Nonorientable Lichen by Terry Berlier, Photo by John Janca