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Disclaimer:
The audio recordings, found objects, and public rituals that appear in several projects below emerged from habits formed long ago.
They were not accumulated for any creative purpose and should not be mistaken for evidence of a pre-existing artistic practice.
The word archive is being applied retrospectively.
I only recently learned that a temperament named pathological in one language could be celebrated in another.      
That revelation alone does not make it mine to speak.
I won’t claim a lineage that is not my own.
The work is not found in the existence or accumulation of these materials, but in what I make of them now.                                                          


























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I held the saw.  

 It screamed to life.  

The house disappeared beneath the whine.  



 The bed  

 suffocates  

 the sound.



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CUSTOMER SERVICE

I work from home as a customer service representative. The website and projects presented here were made during my workday. Texts were written while customers spoke, structures were assembled during calls, and audio was edited between emails.

Customer service is not temporary employment or a day job. It is both my operating system and the work’s.

The position is not entirely scripted. Scripts establish the beginning of each conversation and the limits of what may be said, but most interactions require a highly personalized form of attention. Many customers call regularly. Over time, service begins to depend upon memory, familiarity, selective disclosure, and the careful performance of recognition. The job has trained me to hear small changes in a voice: hesitation, anger, loneliness, arousal, coercion, compliance, panic, and need. It has also trained me to alter my own voice in response.

I work in the longevity industry, where death, pain, bodily function, sex, youth, beauty, status, and institutional knowledge are converted into products, symbols, performances, and promises, then sold through carefully calibrated persuasion. At times, I must sound young enough to sell the promise of regained youth. At others, old enough to understand the need for it, experienced enough to speak from within that need, and fluent enough in the language of multiple institutions to address established professionals with authority while allowing them to preserve their own.


HOW TO ADOPT AN INSTITUTION’S INSTITUTIONAL LANGUAGE AND PERFORM BEFORE THE INSTITUTION IN ONLY AN INSTANT
Play two discussions about the institution’s language, conducted entirely in the institution’s language.
Respond to customer emails.
Turn both up very loud.
Let the speakers argue.
Let their volumes argue too.
Do not listen.

Notice that this has caused the wrong institution’s language to enter the emails.

Change the “clients” back to the “patients.”
Change “repetition” back to “compulsion.”
Change “market value” back to “clinical value,” but continue to speak of it in terms of yield, return, and measurable worth.

Get up.
Walk outside.
Take a one-hour walk
Actually listen this time.
Silently describe everything you see using the new language.
Keep a serious expression, as though you know what you are talking about.
If you know it well enough to annoy yourself, you are ready for dinner.

Go home.
Get dressed.
Perform.


The instructions above were followed in preparing the voice through which this statement is performed.

On the phone, I sometimes offer customers pieces of my life when they help an interaction. Sometimes I invent them. Customers do not know which is which. Through shifts in vocal register, rhythm, diction, syntax, accent, and degrees of disclosure, I can be heard as occupying different positions of age, education, origin, and experience.

The same conditions apply here.

The amount of information offered does not determine the amount of access provided.

The speakers within the work do not belong to one stable biography or time. More than one voice may occupy a single speaker at once. They may overlap, interrupt, or compete for control.

A controlled passage or direction may be interrupted by provocation, excessive explanation, or play. Excitable urgency may, in turn, be interrupted by a more fatigued or skeptical voice. As our script always reminds us: “Assistance is reciprocal.”


HOW TO END ON A HIGH NOTE:

Adopt a higher register.
Add a smile to the voice.
Open your mouth.
Say:

“It’s my pleasure.”
“Assistance is reciprocal.”
“Thank you for your time.”
“Have a wonderful day.”

Hang up the phone.
Wait for the next call to come in.

Autobiography is used, but it is withheld, repeated, cut apart, reorganized, and placed beside performed voices and invented histories.

The work is presented by a customer service representative. No personal name or unobscured portrait will be publicly associated with it. When my physical presence is necessary, identifying features of my face and body will remain concealed. I will use the practiced voice I use with customers: calm, functional, and difficult to place.

Physical encounters take place within an apartment.

You may not see my face, but the encounter remains reciprocal: you may enter my home and move within the walls where I live and work.

Movement between rooms is directed through choreography inspired by childhood theater productions. The voice directing you may shift between childhood and vastly different stages of adult life. You may not know which voice has placed you where you are.

A face can quickly become a complete explanation. Partial information often assigns meaning to a moment before it has had time to unfold.

I would rather be encountered under the conditions of a telephone call, before my face or biography can tell you how to judge what is happening.

Thank you for your time.

Assistance is reciprocal.




















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Pressure builds.
Walls listen.

Fibers split.
Body opens.

Wire.
Sparks.

Line.
Holds.
Open.





















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This is taking longer than usual.


All representatives are currently unavailable.

























In the meantime, you may begin your conversation with one of our pre-constructed representatives.
Please select from the catalogue below:


Poetry 2021–2026 (Redacted)
Too sure of its own answer.
No longer sure...
Looking for poetry? Here is someone else’s.
—>

Inheritance
Three-Room Choreography
A Waveform Score: Accumulate -> Subtract -> Integrate
An Invitation*
Sound Compositions For Rooms Two & Three: Selections From Recording Archive, 2016–2026*
- Ordinary Sounds and Silences, 2023-2026
- Human Crescendos, 2016–2020· Human Hesitations, 2020–2026 · Voices Asking for Assistance, 2025-2026
Room Zero: Play → Practice -> Plywood → Present State*

J
July 2026

Feel Found (Active)
Public Intervention
Telephone Poles -> Directed Wandering → Room for Listening
Public Documentation*

June 2026


Centerline
Film & Sound
Incomplete Perception · Ambient Navigation
Raw Footage*
July 2026


Ordinary Structure, 2022–2026
Photography
Perceptual Monotony
Preview: Western United States, 2026*
July 2026

Measurements
Instructed Exercise
Sensory Testing · Listening to the Body
The Machines - Sound Composition*
May 2026


What Survived The Noise
The Restless Room

Sound · Light · Collapse

The Insomnia Tapes*
- Recording Archive, February 2026 - Present

- Video Archive, 2023-2026

May 2026


Play Pretend, 2007
A Participatory Fairy Tale
Exhaustive Role Rotation · Power Exchange
June 2026

Life Support
Large-Scale Performance 
Physiological Surveillance · Collective Ecstasy
Prison Song, 2011*
May 2026

Instructions for Serious Grown-Ups
Childhood Logic · Practical Wonder
Take Home Booklet*
June 2026


For Those Who Have Trouble Leaving
A Goodbye Ritual
June 2026
Prison Song, 2011
Origin  
May 2026

Nevada

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A Customer Service Representative