This online event will be captioned, ASL will be provided by request. Responding to this moment of “social distancing” and recognizing the limits and implications of language and technology, artists Alice Sheppard and Jerome Ellis use concepts of silence to invite participants into a moment of care and introspection. Using video conferencing as a platform and internet connection as material, the artists will open a space to consider the nuances of silence as generative, not as the absence of input, but a changing relationship to one’s environment. How do we appreciate solitude in its capaciousness, how do our embodied identities influence how we experience this time, and in the urgency to connect —what material circumstances might become obscured or brought into focus? Recognizing also that some of us are quarantined alone, some of us with children, partners, family, or roommates, during the course of the evening, we will invite you to create an experience of silence–whatever that means for you– and share it with us. Accessibility: This gathering will take place over Zoom and Open Captions will be provided. ASL will be provided by request. To request ASL or other access accommodations or questions, please indicate in your RSVP registration, or contact yidan.zeng@eyebeam.org by April 17th. RSVPs will close 30 minutes prior to the start of the event. This event will be recorded for archival and access purposes and posted to Eyebeam’s Youtube page. Artist bios A former professor of medieval English, choreographer and dancer Alice Sheppard trained with Kitty Lunn and was a core company member with AXIS Dance Company. Alice is the founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, a project-based ensemble, working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology to create transformative art and advance the intersectional disability arts movement. A USA Artist, Creative Capital grantee and Bessie Award winner, Alice creates movement that engages intersectional disability arts, culture, and history to challenge conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and such journals as Catalyst. Jerome Ellis is a dysfluent, Afro-Caribbean composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and theater artist originally from Virginia Beach and based in Brooklyn. His concerts, performances, and texts are invitations to healing, transcendence, communion, and deep listening. Through an interdisciplinary practice that focuses on oral storytelling, improvisation, and the interrelations between speech, silence, disability, and religion, he’s collaborated with choreographers, rappers, playwrights, booksellers, typographers, podcasters, toddlers, otolaryngologists, and filmmakers. Mr. Ellis’ work has been presented or developed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Lincoln Center, and WKCR. He’s a 2019 MacDowell Colony Fellow, a writer in residence at Lincoln Center Theater, and a 2015 Fulbright Fellow. Together with childhood friend James Harrison Monaco, he forms one half of the musician-storyteller duo James & Jerome. Their show Ink: A Piece for Museums (co-created with media designer Shawn Duan) was presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival 2019 – the first ever collaboration between the Met and Under the Radar. He’s also a piano tuner and teacher, as well as a translator from Portuguese.