Typing to Tchaikovsky
With: Olivia Norrmen-Smith
Typing to Tchaikovsky is an impressionistic, auto-ethnographic, evocative audio documentary, conveyed through natural sound recordings of intimate life in a chapter of pandemic solitude. I made these recordings during 14 days of strict quarantine upon my return to an apartment emptied of my intimate other’s personal effects, the second of two pandemic breakups. This piece is characterized by connective and isolating digital communications, the banal and the mystical sounds of everyday life and a rethinking of silence, the distinction between "music" and "sound", and the performance-of-self.Creator note: My own personal resonance with this month's prompt is uncanny. My name is Olivia Norrmén-Smith. I turned 30 in March. I am based in Montréal but was born in New York City and my parents now live upstate. My father's mental and physical health has been in decline over the last few years. I lived two major breakups over the course of the pandemic, one of five years and the other of one.
come rain or shine
Creator: Angel Smith
This is a story about defeat. The kind of failure that sits on your chests convincing you there was never any hope in this thing called life. Because as soon as you breathe in, your chest rises, and you think maybe today will be the day that something, anything goes right...you stop and exhale trembling with the fragility of impermanence. Olivia knows this. She is familiar with the exhaustion of trying to move through life expecting anything but cumulus chaos. The group of young girls in their 20s walking down the street taking in NY for the first time, the train anticipating their arrival, and the city of people falling through the cracks between, none of them quite know how slowly time moves in this tiny room. Though Olivia is utterly alone, there is still so much noise.