The Tapeworm sFoundry

A sound installation by Eldritch Priest
January 24 – February 7, 2020 | FREE
Frances and Samuel Belzberg Atrium
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Reception
Monday, January 27, 2020 | 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM | FREE
Catering and a cash bar will be provided

Produced by the SCA's Eldritch Priest, The Tapeworm sFoundry is a sound installation based on The Tapeworm Foundry (2000), a long poem by Darren Wershler that gives instructions or suggestions for creating avant-garde artworks. But the poem is not just long, and not just a manual; it’s an audaciously composed twelve-thousand-word sentence whose guidelines are joined by the conjunction “andor” and whose ending is reached by circling back to its beginning, which, technically speaking, makes it never ending.

Like a tapeworm in the belly of the poem, this installation is parasitic by nature, an artwork that lives on the vital refrains of another work of art. Feeding off the original text, The Tapeworm sFoundry forces it to host a score of melodies generated by the tonal and rhythmic peculiarities of six synthesized voices reading the poem in a continuous loop. At the same time, the ensemble of synthetic instruments that cling to the endless recitation of the poem produce their own refrain that, in a sense, vitalizes the text and gives it the semblance of an aesthetic life, which in its litany of artworks, it could only concoct for others.

This event is free and open to the public, and runs 24 hours a day!

Presented as part of SFU Woodward's 10th Anniversary.