r e p u b l i c

Joe Diebes, lives and works in Brooklyn,

republic is a six channel sound work that explores a peculiar cross-section of America. Limiting my scope to six small U.S. towns named Republic, I have mined textual artifacts from the internet that involve such Americana as ghost sightings in Ohio, a witch persecution in Missouri, minutes from a town meeting in Washington, freak accidents in Pennsylvania, nuclear defense installations in Michigan, and a gun store in Kansas. These texts have been recorded by New York actors, and are played back from different speakers, each representing a different town.

For each town there are about ten different texts which are chosen in real-time at random, separated by a random duration of silence (within a predetermined range). As a result of this process occurring on six channels simultaneously, the piece itself is non-repeating and allows for unpredictable and often serendipitous relationships between the voices.

The audience is encouraged to find their own line through this audio re-mapping of America—listening to individual voices, finding uncanny synchronicities, or just absorbing the dense texture of pulverized speech audible from the center.

www.joediebes.com