Conjugations – a sound answers a sound with Ryan C. Clarke, JJJJJerome Ellis and Kite – Center for Art, Research and Alliances

On September 6, the opening day of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, there will be a performance entitled a sound answers a sound by Ryan C. Clarke, JJJJJerome Ellis, and Kite, organized by Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA). The event happens from 11:30am to 1:30pm at the Invocations space, at the 2nd floor.

A sound answers a sound responds to the theme Not all travelers walk roads by gathering practices that engage the earth not as backdrop, but as co-creator—thinking with land, water, and histories through embodied and situated forms of knowledge. This gathering is an invitation for collective attunement. Together we listen to Clarke’s tracings of ecological memory, which ask us to attend to shifting sediment. We listen to Ellis’s composed landscapes of sound shaped by dysfluencies in time and speech. We listen to the frequencies of Kite’s braided dreams and visions, which make kin with stones, machines, and specters. We listen to the poetics of artists and writers whose poems trace paths of relation.

Ryan C. Clarke is a tonal geologist from the southeastern banks of the Mississippi, and an editor and curator at Dweller Electronics. His work has been published and presented by Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art and Thought, e-flux journal, Rhizome, Burnaway, Terraforma, Harvard’s Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, and MoMA PS1. With Dweller, Clarke produces festivals and publications that center the perspectives of Black electronic musicians.

JJJJJerome Ellis is a disabled artist. They work across music, performance, writing, video, and photography. The artist’s body of work includes: contemplative soundscapes using saxophone, flute, dulcimer, electronics, and vocals; scores for plays and podcasts; albums combining spoken word with ambient and jazz textures; theatrical explorations involving live music and storytelling; and music-video-poems that seek to transfigure archival documents.

Kite is an award winning Oglála Lakȟóta artist, composer and academic. Her scholarship and practice explore contemporary Lakȟóta ontology through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Kite often works with family and community to turn dreams into visual scores for ensembles, performances, and sculptures.

CARA (Center for Art, Research, and Alliances) is an arts nonprofit, research center, and publisher that aims to expand public discourses and historical records to reflect art’s abundant pasts, presents, and futures. Through initiatives including publishing, exhibitions, public programs fellowships and a bookstore we seek to challenge dominant narratives and amplify the breadth of arts and culture.

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Conjugations – a sound answers a sound – CARA
36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice
September 6, 2025
Saturday, 11:30 am
Invocations space, 2nd floor
Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion
Ibirapuera Park, gate 3
Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/n
São Paulo, SP
free admission