Black Box Presents: Sounding Bodies — Collective Utterance in Darkness

How does collective utterance find its conception in darkness? Join artist Maya Yu Zhang for an evening workshop exploring "collective somatic research" — a methodology that weaves together embodied awareness, shared sensing, and collaborative inquiry. Beginning with a brief presentation featuring a short film and soundtrack designed by Sol Kim, Maya will guide us through somatic and writing exercises, and close with a ceremony.

Drawing inspiration from artists who have long understood the body as a site of knowledge — from Allan Kaprow’s Happenings that dissolved boundaries between life, art, and audience — to Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, where spectators became active participants in transformation — to the Judson Dance Theater’s radical investigations of everyday movement — this workshop continues a lineage of interdisciplinary practice that honors both individual and collective ways of knowing.

Using Vox Populi’s Black Box Performance Theater as both actual and metaphorical space, we will engage in guided explorations that attune to the body’s intelligence while creating knowledge together. Through movement, breath, and presence-based practices, we will investigate how groups can research and discover through felt experience rather than purely cognitive analysis.

Presented by FORTUNE, this workshop invites you into an experimental space where darkness becomes a container for deep listening — to ourselves, to each other, and to the emergent wisdom that arises when bodies think together.

Registration is required for this workshop, and will close on September 24 at 7PM. Please fill out our questionnaire upon registering, so that Maya can hone workshop exercises toward your needs and desires.

Homemade mooncakes & seasonal fruit offerings will be served.

Accessibility Info: Please note that Vox Populi is located on the third floor of a historic warehouse building at 319 N. 11th Street and that there are five steps leading from the street-level to the first-floor landing where the passenger elevator picks-up/drops-off. The entry into/out of the elevator is 29-inches wide, so may not accommodate all wheelchairs or motorized chairs. Any individual requiring a ramp to navigate this entryway is encouraged to get in touch with Vox Populi ahead of time to coordinate ramp-access and discuss accessibility details. Our ramps may not be suitable for all wheelchairs or motorized chairs, so we strongly encourage anyone requiring a ramp to be in touch at: events@voxpopuligallery.org or (215) 238-1236

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About the artists

Maya Yu Zhang (b.1991, Zhengzhou, China) is a non-binary artist practicing primarily in moving images. Propelled by a simple desire to follow that which moves, they make and weave images of bodies in vulnerability, ecstacy, madness and abandon to compose an unapologetically queer cadence of seeing, being and healing. Maya employs archival footage, photographs, speech, and performance to instigate an archeology of bodily remains. A recipient of Director's Choice Award at Black Maria Film Festival and Best Documentary Short Award at Indie Memphis Film Festival, Maya has exhibited internationally at Helsinki Festival, Kasseler Dokfest, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, The New York Public Library, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and Anthology Film Archive, among other places.

Sol Kim is an artist based in Seoul and Philadelphia. Using video, performance, photography, and installation, her interdisciplinary practice examines the gaps within the linguistic systems that shapes our everyday lives and creates performative experience intruding into those gaps. Kim earned a BFA at Seoul National University and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

About FORTUNE

FORTUNE (b. Year of the Earth Pig 2019) is a Philadelphia-based print collective, assembled by and for queer and trans Asian publics. We approach printing and self-publishing as a practice of learning, gathering, remembering, and making multiple.

As of 2022, we also operate as a small-scale risograph studio, called Many Folds Press, where we work to provide accessible and responsive print services, primarily in Philadelphia, to make room for more queer BIPOC stories, and to celebrate our own. Our catalog broadly includes resource guides and functional objects, distributed through alternative, slow, or intentional ways.

About Black Box Presents

Made possible through lead support by the William Penn Foundation, Black Box Presents is a yearlong series transforming our Black Box Performance Theater into a platform for 12 community arts organizations, each curating their own monthly event. This initiative amplifies experimental music, dance, film, and spoken word while ensuring free, accessible programming that strengthens Philadelphia’s creative networks.

About William Penn Foundation

The William Penn Foundation, founded in 1945 by Otto and Phoebe Haas, is committed to expanding access to resources and opportunities that promote a more vital and just city and region for all. We do this through funding programs in the Philadelphia region in arts and culture, children and families, democracy and civic initiatives, environment and public space, and workforce training and services. Learn more at www.williampennfoundation.org.