JOELLE ESTELLE MENDOZA

The tool of breath—as survival and survivance. When I imagine futures of resilience, I know it includes carrying our most ancient technologies forward. This project is a direct response to the global pandemic of COVID-19, which specifically attacks the lungs, and to the Black Lives Matter Movement, which carried the cries of Eric Garner and George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” into a catalyst for change. Breathwork and breath awareness can provide insight to the interior landscape of the body and can offer profound clarity. These ceramic instruments are hand tools designed to intersect one’s breathing carried through earth/clay, within space and place.

Carving survivance from earth; clay can provide an instrument of sound. This work uses breath to activate and be amplified by earth/clay. Clay instruments are ancient technologies. They have and will continue to cultivate storytelling, pleasure, music and ceremony; along with alerts, signals and coded language to protect, guide and shield. 

As an instrument, this tool requires an alchemical transformation and process, a crafting of earth to form. This form cultivates a relationship to space—a space for breath to create sound, and sound to forge listening. This process can be easily learned and shared, and become more advanced with practice. In learning and building with clay/earth, there is a relationship to the material that also takes shape. Working with clay/earth transmits conscious and unconscious messaging from our (African diasporic and Indigenous) ancestors. Clay deposits are birthed out of time, water, and organic and detrital materials—all living witnesses.

I believe working with clay can represent an exchange of knowing/being that can combat systems of oppression. I imagine these clay whistles/flutes to extend and transcend outside of language as we know it. To craft and create space for our breath is to shape a sonic full bodily experience and exchange. These whistles and flutes provide space for story. For me, this work is focused mainly on process—collectively and individually. 

Building clay whistles within my community, I’ve witnessed collective and individual determination, confidence and esteem manifest. Wedging, working, pinching, carving, fashioning, re-fashioning and bringing breath to sound is a beautiful process. This is our past, present, future—not time frames of existence in isolation. Wavelengths of exchange are in constant flow, and we need to learn how to refine our listening and relationship to space/earth.

The video and audio weaves together the expressions of individual community artists across the Gabrieleno/Tongva area of Los Angeles. These artists participated in activating and playing the instruments. Because of pandemic measures and safety regulations, all documentation (playing, recording and photography) was outdoors and individual. Then, I compiled individual recordings and wove together various musical arrangements. This collective activation is an ongoing project that will continue to engage community members' participation.

Experience Imagery & Audio From The Project: