Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark at PAMM: WDNA Radio’s Live Transmission into Brainville

Photography by Alex Enescu, Nicole on February 17th, 2024 in Lifestyle

Miami, FL – February 17, 2024 – Guests at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) were treated to an afternoon of music and fun. The hosts of WDNA Radio’s Brainville crew presented a special site-specific live transmission into Brainville from artist Gary Simmons’s sculptural installation, “Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark.” This special live performance “conduction” piece was composed and arranged in real-time by Professor Nicole Yarling and the Brainville High School Jazz Band. “Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark” consists of a stage and speakers that, when activated, serve as a venue for live performances. The speakers are encased with wood salvaged from the streets of New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The objects bear the spray-painted traces of that history, just as they hold the memory of past performance activations. Each time the work is installed, Simmons invites the exhibiting venue to program a performance series inspired by local performance histories. As Simmons explains, “At the end of [each] performance the speakers are left in place as a kind of ghost of that performance.”