Molly Joyce comes to the Chicago Artists Workshop to perform songs that “explore disability as a creative source, including those centered on my direct embodiment of disability as well as from Perspective, an ongoing communally-engaged project featuring disabled interviewees. The songs will be complemented with visual footage including open captions of the lyrics sung, as well as sound descriptions by Chicago-based sound artist Andy Slater, in order to emphasize access as aesthetic.”
Molly Joyce’s music has been described as “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “impassioned” (The Washington Post). Her work is primarily concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. Her creative projects have been presented at TEDxMidAtlantic, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical:NEXT, National Sawdust, and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, and WNYC’s New Sounds. Molly is a graduate of The Juilliard School, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Yale School of Music, alumnus of the YoungArts Foundation, and currently serves on the composition faculty at New York University Steinhardt.
Andy Slater is a Chicago-based media artist, sound designer, teaching artist, and disability advocate.
He is the founder of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists and director of the Sound As Sight accessible field recording project.
Andy holds a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2018 and an Institutional Incubator resident at High Concept Labs 2016-2020. Last year Andy was acknowledged for his art by the New York Times in their article, “28 Ways To Learn About Disability Culture.”
Andy is a teaching artist with the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and is a member of the Atlantic Center for the Arts’ Young Sound Seekers advisory board.
He has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco, Ian Potter Museum of Art Melbourne, Critical Distance Toronto, Experimental Sound Studios Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, Flux Factory New York, and the City Gallery Wellington New Zealand.
Andy’s current work focuses on advocacy for accessible art and technology, Alt-Text for sound and image, documentary film, spacial audio for extended reality, and sound design for sci-fi film and video games. He has created a large catalog of compositions featuring the sounds of the blind body navigatingdifferemt acoustic spaces. These pieces include the bangs and swipes of his white cane and echo location clicks interrupting and disrupting natural and built environments. His recent album, Unseen Reheard (No Index records), epitomizes this tangent of his artistic practice.