A Paradise Choir was a performance installation that happened over four weeks in a newly reopened SFMOMA. The choir comprised museum visitors, professional singers, and amateur choirs all wearing a set of 200 synthetic robes and hand painted stoles. The robes were worn in a series of open workshops, drop-in concerts, and guided architectural tours. These communal choral activities helped to resonate the body and the building through synchronized noise making and careful listening.
When I met Craig Dykers, the architect who designed the new building with his studio Snøhetta, he reminded me that “Paradise is an architectural term.” The word Paradise is rooted from “paridayda,” an old Persian term for a walled space, often a walled garden. These first gardens were hunting enclosures, orchards, and medicinal plants. In this way, our choir was an architectural choir, singing into the acoustic soul of the building, and illuminating an architecture that is invisible for the general public.
A Paradise Choir was first exhibited over four weekends at a newly reopened San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The first three weekends were divided into functions, while the final weekend launched all of the performances in tandem.
