Seawrack

2025

Inspired by dancing with algae on the Pacific coast and all night long at the club, Seawrack (2025-) connects the potential of algae and raving as a way to understand the pervasive plastic industry. I process kelp into “bio-polymer” textiles by pouring an agar-seaweed substance directly onto a sewn linen vest creating jelly-like wearables, or by drying the substance out into kelp-leather. In performance I hand the audience the kelp-textiles to touch, then twirl, thwack and gyrate with the kelp fronds, wafting a damp briny smell into the air, all while shouting descriptions of the rave and eco-research about seaweed’s composting ability over increasingly loud techno. The smell and texture of the seaweed, the throbbing beat, and the exhausting dancing become a meditative ritual with the plastics fused into our cellular walls while mirroring ecology’s endless capacity for change.

video and photographs documented by Max Bienstock.

TUBES

2025 - present

Score: Make clay into the longest tube. Play telephone.

Tubes is a practice in creating raw and ceramic tubes. A collaborative action that can be repeated, Tubes is situational choreography-turned-orchestra exploring the channels in our environment, inside and outside us, and how they can all connect.

First we reclaim the dry clay from previous clay practices, kneading it out using our hands, body, and feet. Then, one after another, brick-like clay blobs are squeezed through a clay extruder, excreting out a hollow tube. Huddling around the extruder, clay blobs in hand, we attempt to make a long of a clay tube, resulting in many short, scrunched, looped, and flumped tubes. We balance the fragile clay tubes with our body and settle them into a position to dry on whatever structures are available. Holding each finger print and tear from the moment of their birth, they dry in the sun then are fired.

After firing, the tubes are archival castings of our site-specific dance and acoustic tools (instruments) to listen and connect with the environments inside and outside the body. Further research is done by connecting the fired tubes with our hands/body to tell messages through, screaming loving declarations into both ends of one tube, or taking a procession around the block to sound and listen through the tubes.

“On Tuesday (tubesday) a beautiful sunny evening AiR Shannon Brooks shared Dirt Disco. The clay tubes formed earlier in the week were arranged outside, like worms in the grass or insides on the outside. We were invited to explore - listening to them like seashells, secrets to each other, investigating the character of each. Tubes were cradles, blown into, warmed by our hands and mouth, our breath and laughter weaving together as the sun dipped low. Harmonizing, syncopation, clarinet, microphone reverb, coyote yips, wolf howls - a fleeting, joyful balm, where play became communion, and the earth itself seemed to hum along. The experience, and the gift of Shannon’s residency in general, is a present and radiant antidote to the uncertainty of our times - open minded exploration, a bumping DJ set, and the power of some good deep breathing”
-Ash. Ferlito testimonial, SOIL FACTORY, 2025

tile making at the Mercer Museum

2025

a visit to the Mercer Museum. a textural dream, traveling into the Mercer house filled with smoke stacks, shadows, and hallways of chipping cement, leading into a clay cellar where a worker's hands make a clay tile.

IMACHILD

Venice Italy and Philadelphia, 2025

Layered iphone video of a power shovel digging up a road, with me dancing in a ballroom in Venice IT and blurry captions of the audio text from Helen Keller's "New Vision for the Blind" read by a computer.

CLAY PRACTICE

2023 - present

CLAY FACE video with sound, Philadelphia, 2024. rehearsal. I have a slab of clay on my face, then dig and carve into the clay to create a creature-eque mask.

clay practice (2024-2025) is an iterative body of research physically connecting with rocks and clay to explore embodiments of deep time, earth, and what we build together through touch perception. As a research practice, I move and sound with a pile of raw clay to discover memories, potential futures, and imaginary dimensions fossilized in our bodies and in the clay-earth. As a group performance, audiences are invited to play with the clay as performers improvise and transmogrify each other into earth-creatures, then let those structures crumble and evolve.

clay practice also extends into a set of ceramic living objects meant to be touched and worn, including spine-fountain (2024), a percussive necklace or thong-leotard, and ceramic exoskeleton (2024), a topographically textured seven-piece vest. When touched or worn, these objects guide a dance shaped by their weight, form, and sound, centering touch as a primary mode of perception. These sculptures were exhibited in a durational, evolving installation where performers worked with clay and ceramic objects while self-audio describing their experiences. Visitors witnessed, wandered, touched the objects, and even napped.

clay practice performance

Fleisher Memorial, Philadelphia 2025

The culminating clay practice exhibition from the Leeway x Fleisher Artist in Residency (2024-2025). Taking the form of an immersive memory-landscape installation including exoskeleton, spine-fountain, and other ceramic works created in clay practice workshops, this exhibition had three parts. First, a hands-on clay practice workshop was facilitated by Shannnon Brooks exploring movement, sound, and raw clay. Then there was an open exhibition space for visitors to explore, rest, and dream in the installation. Finally, there was a two-hour improvised movement and sound performance with the ceramic objects and clay. This clay practice was intended as a ritual engagement with our senses and to decentralize sight as our primary means of experience. By reaching into touch, sound, and memory we blur the lines between and expand our sensorial cosmos and cavort with our uncertain futures.

music and sound: George Shands and Josh Meakim
performance: Shannon Brooks, Kimya Jackson, Cedar Becher
audio description and access: Julia Havard

clay practice performance

Philadelphia PA 2024

improvised sound and movement performance with Yianni Kourmadas at Space 1026.

clay practice performance

Rotunda, Philadelphia 2024

An improvised performance with clay to explore the memories, potential futures, and imaginary dimensions fossilized in our bodies and earth. We begin with a pile of clay, and slowly expands into architectures and creatures from our unconscious. When we move slowly, clay bits fall and thud to the floor, and we allow structures to crumble.

Video documentation by Ami Glazer.

Ceramic Exoskeleton

Philadelphia, 2024

Ceramic Exoskeleton, front
seven-piece handbuilt terracotta garment,
Philadelphia, 2024

Ceramic Exoskeleton, back
seven-piece handbuilt terracotta garment,
Philadelphia, 2024

spinal fountain

Philadelphia, 2024

video of improvisation with spinal fountain. terracotta ceramic vertebrae, elastic cord, plastic tube, water pump, metal clip, in a kiddie pool.

spinal fountain detail

Philadelphia, 2024