Overtone Hive

34 channel sound sculpture
in abandoned  Overton Elementary School

Commissioned and produced by
Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019

in collaboration with Jasmine Guffond
and Lional Freeman

recorded with Mariah Echevarria, Kamiya Arianna Talison, Jeremiah Davis, Getara Mayo,
Lataria Williams, Jasmine W., Ashia Hughes, Denzel Sanders, Marchaun Holmon, Jeremiah Collier, Zavon Reynolds, Caleb Boyd and Karla Soriano

supported by: Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, 21st Century Community Learning Centers

photo ctredit; Cory Devald

text by curator Sepake Angiama

 
 
In summer 2019 Wollny made recordings at the former Anthony Overton Elementary School, one of fifty Chicago public schools that were controversially closed in 2013 in the wake of budget deficits. The work centers on both the physical memory of the building and the collective memory of the community surrounding it. Presented in a classroom at the decommissioned school, the sound installation takes the shape of a large wasp nest made of tangled speakers and cables. Other speakers integrated into the building’s architecture emit sounds of footsteps and children talking, shouting, and making noise, evoking the school’s former vibrancy.

 
Overton Elementary School on the city’s South Side, a stunning 1962 modernist design from architects Perkins + Will whose ghostly halls were filled with the eerie bumps and clangs of Zorka Wollny’s sound work ‘Overtone Hive’.

Ian Volner, Beyond buildings: the expanded vision of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial

 
But it’s what a visitor hears while walking the hallways and stairwells that conveys the impact the school closings had on students. Speakers are conspicuously positioned with thick, black cords extending from them, playing sounds of footsteps and children talking. The installation called Overtone Hive is the work of artist Zorka Wollny.

In one classroom, visitors can hear audio of students’ voices expressing how the closing of Overton made them feel pushed aside and ignored.

„Why is our education less important than yours?” one child asks.

„We are people as well as you are. Look at yourself. You have flesh. So do I,” another voice pleads.

Carrie Shepherd, Chicago Architecture Biennial Reaches Into Closed School
 
 
 

Overtone Hive

34 kanałowa rzeżba dźwiękowa
w opuszczonej szkole podstawowej Overton

Na zamówienie
Biennale Architektury w Chicago 2019

współpraca: Jasmine Guffond
i Lional Freeman

nagrane z udziałem; Mariah Echevarria, Kamiya Arianna Talison, Jeremiah Davis, Getara Mayo, Lataria Williams, Jasmine W., Ashia Hughes, Denzel Sanders, Marchaun Holmon, Jeremiah Collier, Zavon Reynolds, Caleb Boyd i Karla Soriano
przy wsparciu Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, 21st Century Community Learning Centers

fotografie; Cory Devald

tekst kuratorski; Sepake Angiama

 
 
Latem 2019 roku Wollny, wraz z grupą uczniów i nauczycieli, zrealizowała nagrania w byłej szkole podstawowej Anthony’ego Overtona, jednej z pięćdziesięciu szkół publicznych w Chicago, które zostały zamknięte w 2013 roku z powodu deficytu budżetowego. Praca koncentruje się zarówno na fizycznej pamięci budynku, jak i zbiorowej pamięci otaczającej go społeczności. Instalacja dźwiękowa, zaprezentowana w zamkniętej szkole, przyjęła kształt dużego i wielu małych gniazd ze splątanych głośników i kabli. Głośniki te, zintegrowane z architekturą budynku, emitują odgłosy kroków, rozmów, okrzyków i ogólnego hałasu, przywołując dawny klimat szkoły.