Suzanne Klassen
I'm playing with small hand held pieces that attempt to reestablish connections, or rebuild lost experiences or memories. I keep thinking of them as "broken prayer machines" or "bird machines". A machine you might find that once did something, but doesnt anymore (at least on some levels)
I've been thinking of ways for people to collaborate and figured I'd start with portable samplers and so I've been making various versions. The project is 604Special.org
I'm trying different formats for public interaction at bus stops. It would be really easy to become disoriented though, so I need to keep scenes somewhat contained. (street test of The Shoveler, 2024)
Augmented Reality can also be a lot of fun. I just really liked the fabric of this dress. (Space Daisy 2023)
I like the intimacy of the hand scale performance. Playing sound via the body's electrical charge. (Fingerprints, 2023)
Working with sound is always an adventure, and I usually approach without too much of a plan. I try to observe what’s building sonically and thematically and give in to that.
An Everyday Opera evolved over a long time of community interviews, site-specific studies and installations, and then the chaos that was the actual performance. The opera was written & performed by myself, and Varouj Gumuchian. Gary Schilling played the Merchant, Neil Bliss was master of ceremonies, and Richard Greene performed parts of the libretto.
I am a a member of the (now defunct)Vancouver Experimental Theremin Orchestra. Everyone in the orchestra made their theremins - the video here gives a brief glimpse of how we extended them to do other things.
I made a couple of radio documentaries for CBC- "Chinita: Love in Transit" was about a very prolific tagger who fell in and out of love and wrote about it all across Vancouver's transit system. Sadly the documentary and online magazine piece are no longer available, but Chinita wrote to the CBC when it came to her attention.