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