The Community Storytelling Composition Project (The CSCProject) is a multimedia/multimodal, performance-based initiative dedicated to facilitating embodied healing and change by creating space for the archiving of oral histories via performance to learn, listen, and understand each other's experiences by way of personal narrative. 

We develop ethnographic performances by collecting narratives around current and prescient conversations, pairing them with soundscapes and original movement. At The CSCProject we prioritize utilizing aberrant, site-specific spaces for these narratives to be heard outside of conventional proscenium environments, bringing community access and cultural immediacy to the forefront. The narratives are raw and relevant, organically captured in everyday environments. 

Over the past nine months The CSCProject has collected 29 personal narratives via audio that reflect on the systemic injustices within the United States. The narratives, while currently in an oral archive on The CSCProject's website, have been edited down to create a 20-minute soundtrack from the various sound-bytes of each of the stories, becoming a collage of narratives overlapped onto an original sound-score, transforming into a soundscape for a physical performance piece.

In addition to the Oral History Soundscape , we also created a 44-page Zine with the collaboration of 19 artist's and poet's work that reflects, provides commentary, and/or shares personal experiences in relation to racism, inequality, systemic injustice, and the Black Lives Matter Movement. In acknowledgement that everyone receives, learns, and digests information and emotion differently, throughout our performance we will be distributing our Zine to audience members and pedestrians. The CSCProject believes the visual and physical medium of a Zine will provide an additional access point to the dialogue, as well as diffuses the stereotypical relationship between spectator and performer. This gives people agency around the matters being discussed, as something will literally "be in their hands''.

The full piece will first be performed in NYC on Oct. 9th, 2021 by a collection of dancers and performance artists. We will documenting the performance via multiple video angles to host ongoing installations of the projects at various educational institutions throughout the year.

Our mission is to make personal accounts of past and living history accessible in shared spaces, incentivizing social, political, and personal initiatives to continue. We are motivated by the belief that we can collectively create a sustainable world for all members of a culture to safely live, thrive and continue to collaborate with one another. It is a movement of inclusivity and cooperativism.

  

It is The CSCProject’s belief that divergent ideas experienced through creative opportunities develop a type of mutual aid, as these “Creative Commons'' have the potential to transpire into spaces for new conversations, perspectives, and viewpoints to be shared between neighbors who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to engage with one another over such topics. 

Our work considers performance a subversive tool that can be used to generate conversation around particularly significant or charged subjects, and to highlight the voices of those who often are overlooked and undervalued by society. Most of our work focuses on socio-political discourse, investigating felt experience around concepts that have included Disconnection, Involuntary Waste, Local Food Systems, Hydraulic Fracking, Gender Politics and Systemic Injustices.

 

At The CSCProject we believe creative initiatives have potential to cultivate conversations around the changes needed within a community, furthering the potential to develop a wider range of creative solution-based social actions toward community stewardship.  With our work we recruit the mediums of soundscape and performance art as a way to communicate and deliver community stories. The project hopes that such spaces cultivate accessibility and opportunities for exchange, providing more access points for important dialogue.

Our multidisciplinary pieces are created and shared with the hope that the conversation does not end with the performance alone, but translates into long-term social initiatives. In the future The CSCProject hopes to bring our work into schools, using the power of personal narrative to assist in reducing discrimination and misunderstandings.

Simple explanation: Your money goes toward an initiative to amplify BIPOC stories and experiences through the lens of performance.

Longer explanation: The project began in June 2020. Since that time we have collaborated with 29 storytellers, 19 artists, a Brooklyn publishing company, the online Instagram page @nycprotestthruart, a NYC-based audio engineer, 4 directors, and 1 videographer, all of which have not yet been compensated for their time, energy and gifts. We will also need funding for the 12 NY dancers and performance artists as well as the 200 printed copies of our Zine we plan to distribute.

Additionally, come October 9th we will be collaborating with Judson Memorial Church who will be providing us sound equipment, as well as a NY-based "silent disco" headset company who will be supporting us with 150 headsets for audience members to listen to each of the 29 interviews in full that make up the soundscape for the 20-minute production.

Racism, systemic injustice, inequality did not just happen overnight and it takes everyone to reverse the damage that we have all been both voluntarily and involuntary complicit to over the years.

We have acknowledged that it takes years for legislation to make changes, and even with that, it does not mean that legislative changes are supporting the psychological changes needed amongst our community. We believe we need to take that as our responsibility as a culture, to provoke one another to show up more, to do better, and listen to each other’s full humanity. In short, to become better humans. We can’t do the work alone, we need the support of each other. With this project, along with our Campaign, we are inviting folx to help us do just that.

Let us do this together. Not tomorrow or during a more convenient time, but now and today, because it's time that we build a better, stronger and more honest community with and among one another. 

Help us make a movement toward a better world, through the sharing of stories, one performance at a time.

The CSCProject is forever grateful of all contributors, donors, and grassroots efforts in assisting in this project coming into fruition.

Listen to the "Call for Justice" soundscape here: https://soundcloud.com/user-249893975/a-call-for-justice .

Directors: Audrey Aakins, Tamelan Chauvet, Meg Jala
Creative Consultant: Miguel Angel Guzman
CSCProject Curator: Kayleigh Stack
Dancers: Elenora Ramsey Nora, ZayP, Jamison Curcio, Leila Mire, Nicholas Rodrigues, Skye Pickering, Kristina Bermudez, Ikram Bendjillali, Kanami Kusajima, Sakinah Bennett, America, Deborah Black
Audio Engineer: Mario Schöning
Intern: Seth Langer
Zine Designer: Michael Haley

Storytellers: Zion Long, Chisomo Selemani, Kiran Sirah, Robert Pluma, Roderick Long, Devon Antoine, Audrey Aakins, Willie J. Smith, Michael Haley, Joe Mclaughlin, Deollo Johnson, Earl Legister Jr, Kynala Phillips,Tamelan N. Chauvet, Heidi Lajos, Jayson Miller, Carl Straut-Collard, Timothy Westbrook, Jazmine N Russell, Jason Lord, Marisa j. Mcclinton, Tinika Cudjoe, Inno C.P., Annetta, Ikram Bendjillali, Kanon Sugino, Selah Williams, Jayson (J.D.), Peacock. Lissette Soto

Zine artists: Angela Larsen, Marina P-W & Elaine C. Chu, Vince Ballentine, Raul Martinez, Jarrett Robertson, Irena Kenny, Deb Fong, Dante Violette, Pancho Pescador, Eric & Theresa (Menaceresa), Bay Area Mural Program, Steven John Irby, Sharon Virtue, Marco Santini, Lawrence Lopez, Emma ismawi, Lisette Soto, Carl Straut-Collard, Micahel Haley, Emma Johnson

Videographer for GoFundMe: Chase Bauer