Translocality

Rumi Koshino is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in San Francisco. Her intuitive process of making art is informed by everyday experiences as well as social, emotional, and political climates that surround it. She has exhibited her work in the cities along the West Coast and Japan; including the Catherine Person Gallery and Vignettes in Seattle; Right Window in San Francisco; and Sweeney Kay Gallery and The Chetwood in Oakland. Rumi’s collaborations include The Wing Luke Museum and Prairie Underground Clothiers in Seattle. She recently published a limited-edition art book, Solo Walks -The First 100 Days, from RITE Editions. Rumi will be a resident artist at AGA Lab in Amsterdam in 2021. She holds a BFA and MFA from the University of Washington. 



Fereshteh Toosi designs experiences that pose questions and foster animistic connections through encounter, exchange, and sensory inquiry. Their artwork involves documentary processes, oral history, and archival research. These projects are often augmented by audio, video, handmade electronics, and media transmissions. The live art events often take place outdoors in gardens, parks, and waterways. Immersive performances are produced in conjunction with small sculptures, short films, installations, scores, and poetry.

Fereshteh recently earned a Knight New Work 2020 award and a Miami Live Arts Lab Alliance residency. Water Radio, a series of contemplative canoe and kayak outings, was supported by The Ellies Creator Award in 2018.

Fereshteh is an Assistant Professor in the Art and Art History Department of the College of Communication, Architecture, and the Arts at Florida International University in Miami.

Danny Paul Grody is a solo musician and founding member of San Francisco based bands Tarentel and The Drift. He is a self taught guitarist, and the melodies at the core of Danny’s songwriting bring to mind his love of West African kora, finger-style guitar and all things minimal, repetitive & hypnotic. 

Liar Liar Theater Collective (Akaina Ghosh, Jacob Ritts, and Madison Wetzell) has been producing original, site-specific, immersive pieces since 2017. We began our work together with an original translation/adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae in Tilden Park, where audiences were able to choose whether to participate in Bacchic rituals in the woods or witness the crumbling of Thebes while getting to know Dionysus. We are two-time recipients of 3Girls Theatre’s Innovators Series Award, which we used to develop and produce Two Coins for the Ferryman: An Immersive Quest, an ambitious project with six independent and interweaving storylines. We seek to create narratives that investigate methodologies of performance, particularly immersive and interactive experiences that utilize unconventional methods of storytelling. Since 2020, we have been delving into the world of immersive, interactive audio plays.

Lalin St. Juste’s roots meet at the crossroads of the Western world. She dances as sounds slither in her mouth; painting the world with words birthed from a spirit veined with ancestral magic. Commonly described as “mesmerizing” and “hypnotizing” when she performs, St. Juste shifts the atmosphere with her voice, inviting you into her cosmic underworld. Lalin has always been drawn to sound as a vehicle for healing.. At the age of six, she learned to sing through grief – intuitively using her body and her voice as a channel to access dimensions beyond the physical world. Her musical evolution included taking risks to season herself as a singer-songwriter – she spent months donning the guitar to play on sidewalks and cafes. The payoff was inspiring and Lalin joined Haitian folklore group Rara Tou Limen and co-founded Bay Area’s melodic sweethearts, The Seshen, a genre-expansive six-piece band who has shared stages with Hiatus Kaiyote, Ledisi, Tank and the Bangas, and more. 

Now, Lalin has focused her time on developing and sharing her solo work robustly. 2020 was filled with achievements as Lalin received the Zoo Labs artist residency grant, the Gerbode Foundation Grant, and the Yerba Buena Garden Festival Arts Mini-Commission grant. In 2021 Lalin will release her debut solo recordings on 7000COILS, a queer + black-owned indie record label she co-founded with KKINGBOO centering the African diasporic experience through the creation of intentional and innovative digital and live portals. Lalin St Juste sound is gently complex. A range of familiar and unexpected experiences and emotions are continuously shared and easefully invite you in. There is space for all you feel in her offerings. More than a mood, she is both nostalgia and progress colliding in the present. 

John Patrick Moore is an Artistic Associate with Central Works in Berkeley where he directed Project Ahab: or Eye of the Whale, Red Virgin: Louise Michel and the Paris Commune of 1871 and Penelope’s Odyssey and appeared in (Wonderland, Palace Wreckers, Edward King, Winter, Hearts of Palm, Richard the First, Reduction in Force, Midsummer/4, Shadow Crossing, The Mysterious Mr. Looney, The Duel & Mata Hari). With Expanded Arts/Free Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot in New York, he helped develop new adaptations of The Seagull, Medea, Richard II and Dracula. New York credits include: Mr. Knightley in Emma the Musical (NYMF), Charles in Edward III (Hope Theatre Off-Broadway Premiere), King Richard in Richard II and Jacques in As You Like It (Expanded Art’s Free Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot). In the Bay Area, he has worked with Marin Theatre Company, The Magic Theatre, 42nd Street Moon, The Shotgun Players, CenterRep and Pacific Alliance Stage Co.

John also assistant directed Urban Opera’s productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (SF Chronicle’s Top 10 Classical Music in 2009) and The Witch of Endor and SF Lyric Opera’s production of David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion (SF Chronicle’s Top 10 Classical Music performance in 2012) which traveled to Den Fynske Opera in Denmark in 2013.
John completed a two year Meisner Technique Program with JoAnna Beckson in NY, studied Suzuki with Jeffrey Bihr, is member of AEA and an alumni of Groundswell and has an AB in History from Princeton University. John is also the board Treasurer of Soundwave, a non-profit organization promoting innovative voices in sound with the most captivating sound art and performance experiences in the San Francisco Bay Area.

TYLER HOLMES (They/Them) is a singer-songwriter, visual and performance artist who uses music as therapeutic device. Coming from a turbulent and traumatic ‘cult-like’ early life, Holmes has spent a lifetime crafting their own Black, Queer narrative by pushing the limits of their imagination. In a constant state of reinvention they make a mixtape of every moment, from song to song the audience is getting a wholly different animal. Holmes has a chameleonic singing style that ranges from Folk inflected whispers, to morose Goth wails, to Gospel bellows. Envisioning themself as the imaginary child of Björk and Tricky, Tyler Holmes is on an isthmus between Trip Hop and Experimental Pop. They use a surrealist lens on a wide variety of genres, often blending diaristic narratives with dark, dream-like whimsy. Autobiographical and absurd, their writing is alluring and uncomfortable. Both brutal and beautiful, bringing the audience into a shared space of healing and catharsis. They perform with a constantly changing electro-acoustic arrangement, always finding new ways to showcase an intimate horror. Most recently Holmes’ released their music video “Nothing” via Paper Magazine. In 2019/20 they released a series of EP’s and Spring 2021 marks the release of their highly anticipated new LP “Nightmare In Paradise” on Ratskin Records.

Composer and producer Dario Slavazza lives on a sailboat in San Francisco’s North Bay. He works as a music curator for global brands such as FitBit, Obe, and Asics, and leads water excursions for first-timers. A voracious reader, especially of the philosophical implications of entropy, he is also a classically trained saxophonist and recording studio engineer. His sound and visual art are largely inspired by renaissance sculpture, the impressionist and new wave cinema.

Dylan Marx is a composer, writer and educator. His work ranges from sound installation to experiments in recording and archival sampling. He works with filmmakers, choreographers, and co-runs the community radio station Jongleur. He received his BA in Music from UC Santa Cruz and his MFA in Experimental Sound Practices and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts.

Travis Santell Rowland (Qween) is an interdisciplinary performing artist, choreographer, and arts educator who holds B.A. degrees in both Drama (Popular Theatre) and Dance (Performance & Choreography) from San Francisco State University. Rowland has performed at Curran as Dandy Minion in both Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce (2018) and A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2017), San Francisco Opera as Soldier in Tosca (2018) and as Orazio Coclite in Andrea Chénier (2016), Shotgun Players as Ensemble in Iron Shoes (2018), San Francisco Playhouse as Player #6 in Colossal (2016), California Shakespeare Theater as Sprite in The Tempest (2012) and Faerie in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014), Magic Theatre as Mary Subprime Love in Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge (2011). Rowland was Choreographer at Magic Theatre for Dogeaters (2016), Central Works Theater for The Red Virgin (2013) and Ada and the Memory Engine (2015), San Francisco Conservatory of Music for Admeto (2013), A.C.T.’s Young Conservatory for Every 17 Minutes the Crowd Goes Crazy (2013) – Co-Collaborating Choreographer at Shotgun Players for Iron Shoes (2018), California Shakespeare Theater for The Tempest (2012), Intersection for the Arts for Sitting In a Circle (2011), Magic Theatre in Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge (2011) – Co-Collaborating Movement Director for California Shakespeare Theater for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014). Rowland was also invited by Johnathan Moscone to be a presenting drag artist and floor host for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ 25thAnniversary Gala in 2019.

    Starting Friday, October 22nd, 2021

    8PM PST

    @ Various Locations across the Bay Area

    Accessible on via Echoes App

    Donations encouraged to support Soundwave ongoing programming.

Soundwave Next is proud to present Translocality, a hybrid remote and in-person festival seeking to transmute the limitations of linear space and time, in effort to unite human and non-human beings with the significant of sound and place.

Translocality is a series of soundwalks to take place throughout the Bay Area, curated by a group of 9 artists and collectives. Soundwave is proud to announce the following artists:

Dario Slavazza
Dylan Marx
John Patrick Moore
Lalin St Juste
LeeAnn Perry
Liar Liar Theater Collective: Akaina Ghosh, Jacob Ritts, and Madison Wetzell
Rumi Koshino and Fereshteh Toosi
Travis Santell Rowland / Qween
Tyler Holmes

Soundwalks will be featured in the San Francisco Golden Gate Park, SF AIDS Memorial, Sutro Baths, and more. To participate in the soundwalks, download the Echoes App today.

The audience is invited into the fold of the National AIDS Memorial Grove park site circumference with the ushering of a gentle build of complimentary sounds based off their current surrounding like footsteps, bending tree branches, clattering leaves, wind breathing by their ears, soft conversations in the distance and the buzz of nearby cars driving by in succession. As they are welcomed into the entrance of the trail they begin to feel a sense of stalking and swarming along the parameter’s edge of the memorial site. A slow build in sound volume and intensity increases as the audience makes their way walking along the trail as they peek down into the center of the park memorial site with a curious sense of wonder and intrigue through the chiaroscuro light beams dovetailing through the nature formed trees trunks, moss drippings and floral blooms to the heart of what they are about to embark into below. This flirtation of walking along the outskirts of the memorial site while listening to the sounds of nature and humankind, and peering into the seemingly forbidden center compliments a feeling of anticipation as the audience is guided around the entire 360 degree circumference before being permitted to enter into the heart of the memorial site. All the while, the sound score begins to incorporate such things as, but not bound or confined to, iconic LGBTQ voices both sung and spoken, protesters, activists, preachers, politicians, disco and dance music, words of writers and poets etc. spliced into the sonic fold in creatively distorted ways.

As the audience makes their way into the memorial site at the point of completing an entire exterior journey around the grounds, they begin to make connections between the provided sonic score and the visual moments around them like a babbling brook, empty or occupied benches, engraved memorial stones varying in size and familiarity of the dedicated, beautiful flowers, and a seemingly infinite choice of pathways to navigate their way forward on this journey. Eventually, a dell in unveiled which reveals a partially dressed middle aged overweight gay man of color and mixed ethnicity in the middle of a plot of grass sitting at a small table with a vanity mirror applying drag makeup while singing to himself as if no one else is around, although he is surrounded by a suitcase of women’s clothes scattered about while picnicking onlookers are equidistantly seated amidst the drag. This performer stays confined to his scene as he goes back and forth from applying makeup to trying on various drag performance clothing articles. Once he feels his makeup and clothing looks are complete, he then packs up and exits the dell.

Using electronic music, field recordings, and manipulated sound Wavy Diary is a presentation of my experience as a person of color living in the Bay Area sailing community. I want to share the immensity of safety and serenity I’ve found living on a sailboat, in a space overwhelmingly populated by white people, a space that is variously unwelcoming and, on occasion, hostile to a BIPOC presence.

Sailing as a sport and lifestyle has traditionally been for the wealthy, elite, and white. Sailors organize themselves into yacht clubs and groups that mirror and reify the exclusion that defines the community. As a Bay Area native, it’s plain to see who has access to the water and harbours of the Bay Area. The Marinas of the Bay Area are stereotypically white wealthy neighborhoods who cut off access to lower class communities of color. I didn’t connect with the water until I left the Bay Area and moved to Santa Barbara for college.

The project is about finding comfort and community in the confines of an inherently isolating home and activity. Spreckels Lake is a wonderful example of the serenity that the water can offer. This project is not about recreating being on a sailboat. Rather it’s about exploring and sharing the effect of living at sea and within the water has on me–as a musician and craftsman who is mixed race.

The process of buying my boat and moving onto it taught me the reality of being Black and sailing. Brokers questioned my sailing ability outright; marinas clearly were not keen to have me as an occupant; and I’m constantly experiencing microaggressions about my presence from other sailors. Still, some members of the sailing community have been welcoming. The previous owners and builders of my boat, John and Vicki Henson (who also live on a small restored tugboat in the marina), have given me their former home and shared a wealth of knowledge. And their kindness stands in contrast with my interactions with other sailors. It feels good to be invited in. I want to extend a welcome to others. My goal is to open the door and the water to other BIPOC so they can also enjoy its wonders.

Our site-specific audio project is a walking tour of one person’s life set against the backdrop of Golden Gate Park. The narrator begins giving the tour as a 5-year-old in 1950. The narrator ages 5-10 years at each stop on the tour, her voice growing older as the tour goes on. The tour ends in the present day at the end of her life. As she guides the audience to each stop, the narrator shares stories from her life in San Francisco, growing up on the military base in the Presidio, sneaking out to Jefferson Airplane concerts, protesting the Vietnam War, navigating gender barriers by presenting as both male and female, dating men and women, making bad and good decisions, and weathering the crises, twists and joys that make up a complete life. Guiding the audience to the top of Huntington Falls on Strawberry Hill and back down again, this piece will walk the audience through a lifetime in 20-30 mins.

Origins and Transformations is a listening days journey beginning in the remnants of old growth oak woodlands, winding through what was the largest dune system on the west coast now human transformed into forests, gardens and playgrounds and arriving at the wide Pacific Ocean. Through 12 sections, the sojourner will be guided deeper into live close listening to the ever changing sounds of the wind, birdsong, human laughter and languages, music live and recorded, whirl of bicycles and hum of traffic. Sounds, sights and thoughts intertwine to inspire an expansive sense of time and the connectivity of people, animals, landscape and elements.

The route is around 6-7 miles long but each section can be done individually or combined in smaller sections.

1. Origin Oak woodland – Ohlone Land, grove left by the landscape designers, regenerated from the trees cut down by refugees from the 1906 earthquake. What sounds do you hear? Which are mechanical, human, animal, plant, weather? What are your sonic origins?
2. Playgrounds – Skatepark, 10th street playground, tunnel to music concourse, Ferris wheel, fountains, museums. What mix of sounds do you hear? What does play mean to you?
3. Walled Gardens, gateways and thresholds/liminal spaces – path goes past Japanese tea garden, botanical garden, Shakespeare Garden, the National AIDS Memorial What sounds do you hear through the walls, fences and hedges? What and who are enclosed and what and who are kept out?
4. Heroes – Redwood Grove – What sounds are caused by you as you walk through the grove? Who are your heroes?
5. Hybrids -Rose Garden – Can you hear the sounds of insects? What are the impacts of pollination, evolution, genetic engineering? How were you named?
6. History- Monterey pines and cypress 100 Life spans ending, 13 trees of the colonies, Pioneer mother, log cabin, coyote den, conflicting history, Spanish, Mexican history, Ohlone, Who tells history? What stories are in your head? How do they compare to what has been created in front of you?
7. Engineering land transformation of sand dunes to forests and gardens – Stow lake, Strawberry Hill, waterfalls. What is the sounds from your breath and body do you hear as you climb the hill?
8. Displacement- Ohlone, Taiwanese pavilion, Japanese Tea Garden, Junipero Serra statue controversy, Prayer book Cross – Sir Francis Drake, Portals of the Past – What modes of communication do you hear? What sounds are absent?
9. Human connections – Speedway meadow, polo grounds, Spreckels Lake – What sounds do human make? Do they come from their bodies, instruments, electronic devices?
10. Animals wild and domestic- Bison, red tail hawks, ravens, parrots, dog park, Anglers lodge, horse stables, coyotes – What sounds do you here that come from animals?
11. Harnessing the elements – Murphy windmill & Dutch windmill – Air, Water & Earth. How do the landscape and architecture affect the sound of the air and sea?
12. Origin Pacific Ocean – dunes, beach, fire pits, Snowy plover, origin of life, we carry sea in our own bodies – How do the sounds of wind and water affect other sounds

From the artist: “The Sutro Baths is considered one of San Francisco’s most historic tourist destinations. Everyday, it is a place where wedding photos are taken and where people enjoy the natural beauty and ruins that were created by Adolph Sutro. The history of this site begins with Sutro, a white millionaire. We are not privy to what the Ohlone peoples did on these shores. The site’s public information does not mention the 1897 court case in which a Black man named John Harris sued Adolph Sutro as a result of being denied access to the pools. Nor does it mention that he later won the case under the Dibble Civil Rights Act. 

I’ll use the alchemy of sound and memory to shift the soundscape of this occupied land, collapsing the barriers between past and present to unveil the untold stories the shores have witnessed. As a Black, queer womxn standing on the symbols of wealth and occupation, I want to honor those who came before and those who have fallen through the cracks in the white lens of history.”

An excerpt from a larger piece, ‘The Hiss Of The Bay’ will contain elements of sound healing, noise, song and manipulated found sound. Intentionally calling the listener into their pain, through the nuance and complexity of how trauma informs the Black and Queer body, how the audience’s ideals anchored in white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia allow and enable this hurt and through this information a reframe and refocus by bringing attention back to life via a return to the birth of life on Earth, the sea. Elements of sound healing (soothing tones, breath work, meditative vocal loops) work as the shuttle carrying the audience through the piece, accessing an agreed upon goal of healing and catharsis by bringing the viewer into an environment built on humanity and serenity. Elements of noise (jarring, abrasive, discordant, machinic, inorganic sounds) are brought in slowly and carefully to allow space to observe discomfort and pain and question the origins not only of pain but pleasure as well. Noise eventually emerges as melody, a ship built of rubbish, the order created within this violent turbulence creates a song like structure out of fear and pain intended to mimic ‘making sense’ of traumas. From the rhythmic hiss of the noisy and chaotic past to the eternal present hiss of the ocean, the amplified and contorted sounds of the bay, the cycle out of human drama is reflected by the wake as it symbolizes the violence and destruction necessary for creation and embodiment.

Growth is a sound art experience that begins at the 1969 Ruth Asawa mosaic of the same name at 580 Capp St. It’s a series of guided meditations situated in the urban landscape of the Mission. Participants are invited to slow down, listen, reflect on the past, and contemplate our collective responsibility to future generations.

Proceed to each stop from west to east. This experience will take approximately 50-60 minutes. Wear comfortable shoes, use headphones, and please stay alert to traffic and other hazards while you walk.

Produced by Rumi Koshino and Fereshteh Toosi as part of the Oil Ancestors project, with music by Danny Paul Grody.

A Dove is a Pigeon is a Dove is speculative documentation of a pigeon’s stroll through Golden Gate Park, a place that once had several pigeons but now has very few. Starting on the sidewalk in the Richmond District and ending on the sidewalk in the Inner Sunset, the walk is made up of sounds recorded on site from a late summer day. Each recording is a 1-5 minute looped audio documentation of the space recorded at pigeon height. As the participant walks along, the sound of the recordings will mix with the live sounds of the walk, juxtaposing memory with the present day. In addition to the sounds, every other space contains a musing on the rock dove, as well as on the concept of infrasound, a tool the birds use to navigate their environments. Participants are invited to reflect on their own experiences with Golden Gate Park, as well as their relationship to the common pigeon.

(re)collection is a series of site-specific installations by LeeAnn Perry that bring together memories of defunct and ephemeral music venues in the Bay Area, in order to reconnect participants in musical communities that have fragmented through time, to resurrect networks of musical collaboration that have lain dormant, and to invite newcomers to these communities to pay tribute to their inspirations.

A Dove is a Pigeon is a Dove is speculative documentation of a pigeon’s stroll through Golden Gate Park, a place that once had several pigeons but now has very few. Starting on the sidewalk in the Richmond District and ending on the sidewalk in the Inner Sunset, the walk is made up of sounds recorded on site from a late summer day. Each recording is a 1-5 minute looped audio documentation of the space recorded at pigeon height. As the participant walks along, the sound of the recordings will mix with the live sounds of the walk, juxtaposing memory with the present day. In addition to the sounds, every other space contains a musing on the rock dove, as well as on the concept of infrasound, a tool the birds use to navigate their environments. Participants are invited to reflect on their own experiences with Golden Gate Park, as well as their relationship to the common pigeon.

GRIDgevity was chosen as a title based on the significance of this location/site in Golden Gate Park as it links the National AIDS Memorial Grove with the Queer past, present and future, the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s to the present punk rock, cruising, drag, nightlife scenes. GRIDgevity is an exploration of identity with a seemingly infinite choice of pathways to navigate a direction forward as we traverse through our lives.

The audience is invited into the fold of the National AIDS Memorial Grove park site circumference with the ushering of a gentle build of complimentary sounds based off their current surrounding like footsteps, bending tree branches, clattering leaves, wind breathing by their ears, soft conversations in the distance and the buzz of nearby cars driving by in succession. As they are welcomed into the entrance of the trail they begin to feel a sense of stalking and swarming along the parameter’s edge of the memorial site. A slow build in sound volume and intensity increases as the audience makes their way walking along the trail as they peek down into the center of the park memorial site with a curious sense of wonder and intrigue through the chiaroscuro light beams dovetailing through the nature formed trees trunks, moss drippings and floral blooms to the heart of what they are about to embark into below. This flirtation of walking along the outskirts of the memorial site while listening to the sounds of nature and humankind, and peering into the seemingly forbidden center compliments a feeling of anticipation as the audience is guided around the entire 360 degree circumference before being permitted to enter into the heart of the memorial site. All the while, the sound score begins to incorporate such things as, but not bound or confined to, iconic LGBTQ voices both sung and spoken, protesters, activists, preachers, politicians, disco and dance music, words of writers and poets etc. spliced into the sonic fold in creatively distorted ways.

From the artist: “The Sutro Baths is considered one of San Francisco’s most historic tourist destinations. Everyday, it is a place where wedding photos are taken and where people enjoy the natural beauty and ruins that were created by Adolph Sutro. The history of this site begins with Sutro, a white millionaire. We are not privy to what the Ohlone peoples did on these shores. The site’s public information does not mention the 1897 court case in which a Black man named John Harris sued Adolph Sutro as a result of being denied access to the pools. Nor does it mention that he later won the case under the Dibble Civil Rights Act. 

I’ll use the alchemy of sound and memory to shift the soundscape of this occupied land, collapsing the barriers between past and present to unveil the untold stories the shores have witnessed. As a Black, queer womxn standing on the symbols of wealth and occupation, I want to honor those who came before and those who have fallen through the cracks in the white lens of history.”

(re)collection is a series of site-specific installations by LeeAnn Perry that bring together memories of defunct and ephemeral music venues in the Bay Area, in order to reconnect participants in musical communities that have fragmented through time, to resurrect networks of musical collaboration that have lain dormant, and to invite newcomers to these communities to pay tribute to their inspirations.