“Shirt Song” is a performance from a series of works that uses choreography, tactile sculpture, and sound to embody the histories of, and shifts between, sociopolitical and economic value-systems. This work considers how bodies and cultural beliefs adjust to codified labor systems, the development of fast fashion within the industrialized garment marketplace, and minimalist forms and their potential subjectivity.

The working body harbors a vernacular for ways of being—in movement, rest, hunger, and in conforming to a given place and task. These states of being are mediated through sculptural forms into a taxonomy of systematically enacted gestures.

“Shirt Song” uses the Lower East Side and its history of garment production and sweat labor as a tool to articulate themes of social organization, industrialization, commodification, and communication. Minimalist sculptures amplify the historical neighborhood. The sound generated is live-mixed in the gallery space, and two performers enter and exit the gallery as they traverse the city block.