Wake of vultures

In residence: 2018

Dan O’Shea, Nancy Tam, Conor Wylie

During their 10-day residency at Coppermoss, Wake of Vultures furthered their research into collective singing. Their launching point was their shared interest in the various facets of karaoke: the enthusiastic amateur on stage, the liberating intimacy of the private room, the delightful cheesiness of karaoke background videos. This very urban interest fed a desire to explore other modes of collective singing: around the campfire, in hymns and choirs, and all manners of collective singing as a way of communion, which are practiced in every culture around the globe since before recorded history. This form of sharing and performance has transcended genres from the sacred to the secular in intimate and public settings. They were interested in understanding what is produced and transmitted in the performance of collective singing and how the experience impacts the individual and the community.

In their words: “We remember our company residency at Coppermoss in February 2018 very clearly. It was a time of recalibration from the noise of the urban to the tranquility of the rural. Coppermoss offered us an immediate sense of communion with its round shaped structure, and invited us to slow down. At Coppermoss, we learnt that we could work productively and be relaxed at the same time. The philosophy of Coppermoss seems to permeate all facets of the residency program. The beautiful structure and magnificent environs was always present and welcoming. Over the first few days, we slowly unfolded and opened to them. In the same way, the residency requirements reflected this attitude; Simon and Sadira asked us to trust that the germs of our ideas will flourish and reveal themselves in unexpected ways if we take our time and patiently observe their growth. Since Coppermoss, we have found we are working in a less deadline-driven, and therefore more relaxed and sustainable way, and we recognize that the residency was a turning point for this new way of working.”

A Wake Of Vultures (WOV) consists of three interdisciplinary artists based in Vancouver, Canada: Nancy Tam, Daniel O'Shea, Jr. and Conor Wylie. We created WOV in 2013 as a project based collective after fruitful collaborations as student artists SFU. Since then, we have been produced by various organizations in North America. We use sound, and performance as our primary mediums, and in our recent collaborative work investigate notions of nostalgia, space and place, and the insertion of theatre into the everyday. In doing so, we have sound and projection installation like "Lost Words Uttered Too Late" (2012), performance and sound installation "...wreckage upon wreckage…" (2013), audio walk "Some Hallways Lead To Other Hallways And Some Lead To Dead Ends" (2013), and a play "PKD Workshow" (2014).

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