Our Collective Becoming, 2025 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Installation, sound, and performance
MOCA Tucson, Arizona
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Our Collective Becoming unfolded as a large-scale sound installation, combining hand-dyed bed sheets colored with carob seeds and a 15-minute immersive sound composition. At its core was the narrator’s voice, appearing as a sentient being—gold itself speaking, reflecting on its own entangled history as both sacred material and a driver of colonial exploitation.
Two live performances took place during the exhibition, activating the installation as a ritual space. Performer*innen embodied gold in its different states—geological, extracted, traded, worshipped, and technologically transformed. The immersive soundscape and the voice of gold as a sentient witness accompanied and expanded these performances, intertwining resonance, movement, and storytelling.
The fabrics, dyed with carob seeds, recall the origin of the term carat—the historical unit for measuring the weight of gold and diamonds. This choice of material connected linguistic history with systems of value, measurement, and resource extraction.
Alongside its spiritual and economic dimensions, gold was also introduced as a high-end material in contemporary technologies—from data processing and mobile phones to its role in medicine as a microscopic carrier of healing substances.
By reworking these symbolic and material entanglements, the installation exposed the deep connections between ecological exploitation, technological progress, and the fragility of both landscapes and bodies.
