Risograph-printed
on Hemptone paper by French Paper Co.
with silk flag remnant
Edition of 10
8x8”
Artist: Jean Brennan, 2023

Performing vowels in the note of blue (8 minute video) is a score for non discursive communication within a grove of red pines. Planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s in the Catskills, this stand possesses the uncanny quality of a single species plantation gone wild. Five women (a,e,i,o,u) perform the vowels through the use of semaphore flags—a signaling system that augments the body to communicate across distances of land and sea. The movements—like language, like the forest—slip between structure and improvisation. Together, we consider how meaning is constructed in human and nonhuman worlds and imagine a space for communication between. This risograph-printed zine accompanies the video.