Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Yanira Castro / a canary torsi, and a team of collaborators, launch a new public art project as an act of intervention during the 2024 Presidential election. With Exorcism = Liberation, the award-winning Castro engages the American public to experience shared concerns and future-building, embedded in Puerto Rican culture and the U.S.’s ongoing colonial history. Born out of the necessity to come together to enact a just collective future, Exorcism = Liberation grounds us in immersive experience and action. Trusting in the power of empathy, the project’s audio experiences offer space for the public to feel and to act while reflecting on difficult questions like: What is the disaster you are preparing for?

Coordinated with a multitude of participating community and arts organizations in citywide collective experiences between July and November 2024, Exorcism = Liberation will have an “on-the-ground” presence in three U.S. locations with strong Puerto Rican diaspora communities. This multifaceted project is stewarded locally by Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, IL; A.P.E. Ltd. in partnership with UMass Fine Arts Center in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts; and a canary torsi in New York City. Exorcism = Liberation can also be accessed on the project’s website: www.exorcism-liberation.net.

Exorcism = Liberation utilizes familiar forms of political media campaigns, placing provocative slogans on the street and mass transit, distributing stickers, posters, handmade banners, lawn signs, and buttons/pins through local community organizations acting as distribution hubs. The slogans reflect the project’s themes:

“What is your first memory of dirt?”
“I came here to weep”
and “Exorcism = Liberation.”

Accompanying each slogan is a QR code leading to an immersive audio experience in which local Puerto Rican performers prompt the individual listener to remember their connection to land, grieve, and conjure a liberated world. Exorcism = Liberation is a call to action, a rehearsal for collective liberation. “It offers a different kind of campaign than the election we are in the middle of,” says Castro. “We want to connect, challenge, spark conversation, contemplate, move, and provoke change.”

Exorcism = Liberation is an extension of Yanira Castro / a canary torsi’s I came here to weep, a multimodal participatory project enacted by the public and supported by Creative Capital.

ARTISTIC CREDITS

Conceived, Written and Directed by Yanira Castro
Audio recordings performed by Melissa DuPrey, josé alejandro rivera, Steph Reyes
Bomba performed by Michael Rodríguez
Audio Design by Erica Ricketts
Graphic Design by Alejandro Torres Viera and Luis Vázquez O’Neill
Creative Producer Ariel Lembeck
Project Management Tyler Rai

PARTNERS AND HUB SITES

The following is a list of partnering organizations that are supporting Exorcism = Liberation by hosting an event and/or serving as a place where you can find the project’s materials (stickers, pins, etc.) that are available and free to the public. The list is still in formation. To join the project by becoming a participating hub please email hello@acanarytorsi.org.

Peoria, Potawatomi, Myaamia, Kaskaskia, Kiikaapoi Lands / Chicago:
21C Museum Hotel Chicago, Experimental Sound Studio (ESS), The Guerrilla Art Collective / ARTivism Program at Curie Metro HS in Chicago, Honeycomb Network, La Huerta Roots & Rays Garden, Lumpen Magazine, The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture, Public Media Institute at Co-Prosperity, UrbanTheater Company

Nonotuck, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc Lands / Massachusetts:
Amherst College Library, Amherst College La Causa, Amy H. Carberry Fine Arts Gallery at Springfield Technical Community College, A.P.E (Available Potential Enterprises) Ltd., Holyoke Public Library, Holyoke Media, Lighthouse, UMass Fine Arts Center, W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst

Lenapehoking / New York City:
Abrons Arts Center, Center for Performance Research (CPR), CENTRO (Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College), The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, The Invisible Dog Art Center, ISSUE Project Room, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

Digital image by Alejandro Torres Viera and Luis Vázquez O’Neill.