The Arctic Group Presents HARMONY at Dixon Place and HERE Arts

Harmony is an audio documentary and sound sculpture enhanced with visual/movement elements, featuring the collective consciousness of voices around the globe. It was first conceived as a response to China's extreme enforcement of Internet surveillance and people's silent protest using puns and metaphors. Over the past year we've collected 46 individuals' responses on a set of questions, who shared their takes on the world's current state, their interpretations on some of the most universal yet polarizing concepts, as well as the vulnerabilities we share as a race. Harmony is set to be a living, growing, and evolving organ that would pick up whatever's happening in the moment. In this installment, our presentation will feature live responses in DC at the women's march and the aftermath of the 2017 inauguration.

This is an attempt to find resilience through difficult times.
Conceived by Ran Xia in the fall of 2015 while experiencing censorship in China.

From the creator:
Since the fall of 2015 I have been working on and gathering materials for audio play HARMONY, which deals with the internet/government surveillance in China. Many of the elements that I have experienced as a Chinese citizen (not being able to access websites with user generated contents including Facebook, wikipedia, etc), are eerily possible in our not-so-distant future in the US. Harmony, in China, is an illusion, accomplished by the government's control over media. Harmony, in the US, is what that man meant by "great". And that "greatness" comes with a pre-requisite.

Harmony, pronounced "He Xie" in Mandarin, is written as the characters "??". "??", two completely different characters, are pronounced the same way, however they mean "the river crab". The young generations of China accomplish cyberspace civil disobedience in that way, referring to the words they want to express with different characters of similar pronunciation in order to dodge surveillance. I want to discover the undercurrent amongst Americans.
I want to make a piece that broadcasts the beauty of the "disharmony", which is represented by the minorities, members of the LGBT+ community, the women, the thousands of illegal immigrants, etc.

This is a collection of voices, converging together like streams to the ocean, which carry so much power and hope.

This is a hearing space, which will surely generate conversations, through which I hope a community will flourish.

HARMONY plays at Dixon Place on January 23, 2017, at 7:30 pm

For more information go to www.dixonplace.org/performances/harmony

HARMONY plays at HERE Arts Center as part of the Sanctuary series on Feb 8th, 2017, at 8:30pm.

For more information of SANCTUARY go to

http://www.here.org/shows/detail/1870/

Information and samples of HARMONY can be found at www.thearcticgroup.org/harmony

HARMONY is a production of The Arctic Group. The audio piece is created by Ran Xia, with crucial collaboration of Charlotte Arnoux. Featuring voices of Raquel Borromeo, Sean Jenny, Clara Pagone, Jennie Campbell, Lindsay Wells, Matthew Vitticore, Charlotte Arnoux, Joey Labadia, Monica Trausch, Joanna Fang, Maya Land, Adham James Haddara, Gehad 'Gee' ElShaikh, Abraham Marlett, ALex Parrish, Danny Wilfred, Emily Cordes, Amy Cordes, Emily Krause, Jason Almeida, Joey Rizzolo, Katie Vincent, Laura Aristovolus, Lexa Krebs, Marissa Rutka, Priyanka Voruganti, Victoria Giambalvo, Aurelien Arnoux, Penny Wu, Christopher Fok, Erika Baum, Byanjana Thapa, Irene Turri, Puy Navarro, Dominique Ducamps, Laure Porche, Ran Xia, Simon Lu, Kendra Augustin, Jake Geary, K. Sloan, Janet Admasu, Lula Konner, Karen Oughtred, Erica Rose, and Mo Faramawy

Music by Lulu Clohessy, Neil Erua, K. Sloan, Ran Xia, Charlotte Arnoux, etc.