A sound installation in the historic 1907 Bridgehampton Jail

Bridgehampton Museum by Philippe Cheng

This installation gathers eighteen pieces, songs, speeches, poems, into one small room. Four channels run simultaneously, so no single voice ever stands alone: they cross, compete, harmonize, interrupt. Between some of them, brief moments of quiet open up, pauses that are as deliberate as anything spoken or sung. And within that quiet, another voice persists: birdsong, chirping in and out, indifferent to anniversaries, holding the room the way it would hold any room. What you hear, and what you hear in the silence, depends on where you stand.

The occasion is the 250th anniversary of the United States. But this is not a soundtrack to a single story of that anniversary, it is a soundtrack to the moment of it, to standing inside a quarter-millennium and hearing what's actually being said, by whom, in how many forms and registers at once. Folk song sits beside protest chant, gospel beside elegy, a poem beside a speech, a bird beside all of it, a register that was here before the country and will be here after it.

The voices span generations and intentions, made to commemorate, to mourn, to refuse, and everything between, speaking to the complex of emotions this anniversary actually holds, not the simpler one we're handed. The list is not definitive and was never meant to be. Eighteen pieces is a fraction, a personal selection, incomplete by design and open to revision, the way any honest account of a country's anniversary should remain open. This is a soundtrack still being made.

The room itself is part of the piece. A jail is a place built to hold people and to decide, on the country's behalf, who belongs where. To fill it instead with overlapping voices, speech, song, silence, birdsong, that could not be contained by a single channel, let alone a single cell, is its own kind of statement, made without a word of didactic text.

Stand still here. Let the channels overlap. You will not hear all eighteen voices clearly at once, and you will not hear all of the silences either. That is the point. No one ever has.

 The installation includes the following pieces

The Hill We Climb Amanda Gorman The Gentleman

Written by Amanda Gorman

A Everything In Its Place Radiohead

Written by Thom Yorke

This Land Is Your Land Sarah Jones & Dap Kings

Written by Woody Gurthie

Higher Ground Stevie Wonder

Written by Stevie Wonder

Real Real Love Nancy Atlas with Winston Irie

Written by Nancy Atlas

A Seasons Of Love Cast of Rent

Written and composed by Jonathan Larson

Both Sides Now Joni Mitchell

Written by Joni Mitchell

A War With Time Brandi Carlile

Written by Brandi Carlile

Wake Up Everyone Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes

Written by John Whitehead, Gene McFadden and Victor Carstarphen

A I Can’t Breathe H.E.R.

Written by by H.E.R., D'Mile and Tiara Thomas

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution Tracy Chapman

Written by Tracy Chapman

A Fight the Power Isley Brothers

Written by Ernie Isley

I Have Dream Martin Luther King with The Gentleman

Written by Martin Luther King

A Circassian 1876 Thunderbird Sisters

Written by The Thunderbird Sisters

Ownership a haibun Kathy Engel

Written by Kathy Engel

 What is Life George Harrison

Written by George Harrison

Indefinable Mysterious Power Mahatma Gandhi

Written by Mahatma Gandhi

              Say Her Name ( Hell you Tambour ) Janelle Monet with Beyoncé Knowles, Alicia Keys, Tierra Whack, Zoë Kravitz, Brittany Howard and Chloe x Halle

Written by Janelle Monáe and the members of her Wondaland artist collective, including Deep Cotton, George 2.0, Jidenna, Roman GianArthur, and St. Beauty

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