Trope Honor
CURATED BY AMEEN WHABA
SEPTEMBER 13TH - OCTOBER 18TH, 2019
What turns language into meaning? Do lyrical forms of articulation, meter, and symmetry expand language’s primary function to transmit information through a system of senders and receivers comprised of a circumscribed set of symbols? Do they move phonetics, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics, beyond understood forms of knowledge production to reveal hidden truths?
Sound is produced when something vibrates. Those vibrations travel through the air, water, and ground carrying meaning with them--soundwaves with mapped areas of high and low pressure called compressions and rarefactions, respectively. When two identical waveforms are added together, peak meets peak, and trough meets trough, doubling the amplitude; constructive interference. If two opposite waveforms are added, peak cancels trough, diminishing the waveform and leaving silence; destructive interference--hidden meaning.
Alongside work by Thalia Rodgers and video by Ameen Wahba, Trope Honor, curated by Ameen Wahba, pairs spoken word recordings by Amanda Huckins, Zedeka Poindexter, Paul Hanson Clark, and Devel Crisp with ambient and percussive recordings by Nick Holden, Phillip Kolbo, Colin Duckworth, and Graham Patrick Ulicny. Each pairing constitutes a new collaborative work that disrupts our understanding of how meaning is transmitted through the sound of language, shifting emphasis away from what we hear to how we hear it. Rooted in chance and hinged on the interdependencies created by combining disparate waveforms, these new works complicate impulses to construct traditional narratives based on lyrical content by asking listeners to sink into the troughs rather than scale the peaks.
This exhibition was presented with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
Installation Images
About the Artists
Ameen Wahba: Ameen Wahba is a poet and musician currently living in Omaha, NE. He is interested in creating work that reinforces our capacity as humans to grow and love through improvisation, participation, play, and self-reflection.
Amanda Huckins: Amanda Huckins is trying, is technically inefficient, is an information conduit, mainly. The information often makes her cry pretty hard as it speeds through the chunk of the grid that is her.
Zedeka Poindexter: Zedeka Poindexter is a North Omaha born and raised artist. She is Omaha's first and only woman of color slam champion. Zedeka is a two time Omaha Entertainment and Arts award winner for best performance poet, a fellow with the Union of Contemporary Art, and former Omaha Poetry Slam slam master. Her work has been published by the online literary magazine The New and Alight: Best Loved Poems from the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam.
Paul Hanson Clark: Paul Hanson Clark is a poet and multidisciplinary artist from Nebraska. He does merrily merrily merrily merrily & LOSER WORLD. @paulhansonclark
Devel (Developing) Crisp: Devel Crisp resides in Omaha, Nebraska. He was born in 1983 with a healthy appetite for construction. Whether it be creating poetry, songs, scripts or a character, he uses the pinnacle of his talents to produce genuinely unique works. Crisp has been performing Hip-hop, spoken word and poetry for over 15 years and stage acting for over seven. He is a Teaching Artist for the Nebraska Writers Collective, which allows him to go into schools and lead poetry workshops. In 2016, he became the Omaha slam poetry champion and won an Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award in 2017 for Best Performance Poet.
Graham Patrick Ulicny: Graham Ulicny is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound engineer living in Omaha, NE. Having performed, toured and recorded in many capacities since 2008, some notable groups Ulicny has worked with include Reptar, Thick Paint, Icky Blossoms, The Faint, and L00k. As part of the Dust Ensemble he contributed original music to several theatrical productions including Hilary Bettis’ “Alligator” which was nominated for a 2016 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play.
Thalia Rodgers: Thalia Rodgers is an artist currently living in Omaha, NE. She received her BFA from UNL. She has shown her work extensively around Lincoln and Omaha. Her work is a surrealistic visualization of her subconscious and a way to map out her everyday thoughts.
Phillip Kolbo: Philip Kolbo is a performing artist, composer, and the executive director at OutrSpaces. He performs a diverse repertoire of contemporary multi-media works as a soloist and in ensemble settings. Philip began work founding OutrSpaces after graduating in 2016 from the University of Nebraska Omaha with a bachelor's in music performance.
Nick Holden: “anyone can be grampa, but it takes someone special to be gramps” ~ grey and beautiful ‘19
Colin Duckworth: Colin Duckworth (1989-) is CHARACTER LIMIT EXCEEDED