Past Exhibitions 2023
Elevator Music 46: Molly Joyce—Perspective
Elevator Music 46: Molly Joyce—Perspective invites visitors to explore contemporary disability experiences through audio interviews with disabled participants layered with an emotionally resonant score. Prompted by a reframing of how she understands and names her disability—an impaired left hand from a childhood accident—Joyce began interviewing participants from a wide range of backgrounds and disabilities, asking what such terms as access, care, control, strength, and cure mean for them. In Perspective, unidentified voices from the disability community respond to a series of questions: What is control for you? What is cure for you? What is resilience for you? and What is darkness for you? Combined with electronically processed recordings of Joyce’s voice and signature vintage toy organ, interviewees’ responses encourage visitors to consider the ableist underpinnings of contemporary culture. This multisensory installation presents four tracks from Joyce’s recently released 12-track album Perspective, accompanied by an open-captioned video, and a bench with vibrotactile devices that enable visitors to physically engage with the aural components of the work.
Molly Joyce is a composer and performer whose work is concerned with disability as a creative source. Joyce’s creative projects have been presented and commissioned by Carnegie Hall, TEDxMidAtlantic, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, deSingel, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Music Academy of the West, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical:NEXT, and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, eBay, Red Bull Radio, WNYC’s New Sounds, and I Care If You Listen.
Her compositional works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Vermont, New World, New York Youth, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, as well as the New Juilliard, Decoda, Contemporaneous Ensembles, and Harvard Glee Club. She has written for publications 21CM, Disability Arts Online, Women in Foreign Policy, and is a member of the Americans for the Arts’ Artists Committee.
Joyce is a graduate of The Juilliard School, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and Yale School of Music. She holds an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from CUNY School of Professional Studies, is alumnus of the National YoungArts Foundation, and has served on the composition faculty at New York University Steinhardt and Wagner College. She is currently a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia, focusing on composition and computer technologies.
