Betsey Biggs

For mobile audio and public participation. 59 minutes, 19 seconds. Detox Project was reviewed by music critic Alex Ross for The New Yorker.

On Sunday June 7th, 2009, I joined more than twenty New York-based sound artists and musicians in an experiment — the ISSUE Project Room Soundwalk-a-thon — a fundraiser and collective public inquiry into the connection between urban space and our sonic imaginations.

Detox Project was the third in a series of Park Bench Cinema projects – musical cinematic dreams for specific times and places – in this case, an hour-long sounding walk around the Gowanus Canal starting from and ending at the Old American Can Factory. I wanted to cleanse the area – and metaphorically, a friend (Suzanne Fiol, the founder of Issue Project Room, who was ill) – of toxins. Beginning with a headphone heartbeat amplified by trash drums, participants hummed, howled and drummed their way though a walk blurring natural and electronic sounds, building up to a joyful and purifying din. We scared the toxins away, or at least tried.

PERFORMANCES

2010: Soundwalk-a-thon, ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, NY, USA.

PRESS

“Symphony of the City,” Alex Ross, The New Yorker, July 6, 2009.