Sounding Bodies — Collective Utterance in Darkness
Presented In Partnership with FORTUNE
9/26 FREE Doors at 7PM, Workshop 7–9:30PM
TICKETS HERE
How does collective utterance find its conception in darkness? Join artist Maya Yu Zhang for an evening workshop exploring “collective somatic research” — a methodology that weaves together embodied awareness, shared sensing, and collaborative inquiry. Beginning with a brief presentation and film, Maya will guide us through somatic and writing exercises, and close with a ceremony.
Using Vox Populi’s Black Box Performance Theater as both actual and metaphorical space, we will engage in guided explorations through movement, breath, and presence-based practices.
Presented by FORTUNE, this workshop invites you into an experimental space where darkness becomes a container for deep listening — to ourselves, to each other, and to the emergent wisdom that arises when bodies think together.
About the Artist
Maya Yu Zhang (b.1991, Zhengzhou, China) is a non-binary artist practicing primarily in moving images. Propelled by a simple desire to follow that which moves, they make and weave images of bodies in vulnerability, ecstacy, madness and abandon to compose an unapologetically queer cadence of seeing, being and healing. Maya employs archival footage, photographs, speech, and performance to instigate an archeology of bodily remains. A recipient of Director's Choice Award at Black Maria Film Festival and Best Documentary Short Award at Indie Memphis Film Festival, Maya has exhibited internationally at Helsinki Festival, Kasseler Dokfest, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, The New York Public Library, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and Anthology Film Archive, among other places.
About FORTUNE
FORTUNE (b. Year of the Earth Pig 2019) is a Philadelphia-based print collective, assembled by and for queer and trans Asian publics. We approach printing and self-publishing as a practice of learning, gathering, remembering, and making multiple.
As of 2022, we also operate as a small-scale risograph studio, called Many Folds Press, where we work to provide accessible and responsive print services, primarily in Philadelphia, to make room for more queer BIPOC stories, and to celebrate our own. Our catalog broadly includes resource guides and functional objects, distributed through alternative, slow, or intentional ways.
About Black Box Presents
Made possible through lead support by the William Penn Foundation, Black Box Presents is a yearlong series transforming our Black Box Performance Theater into a platform for 12 community arts organizations, each curating their own monthly event. This initiative amplifies experimental music, dance, film, and spoken word while ensuring free, accessible programming that strengthens Philadelphia’s creative networks.
About William Penn Foundation
The William Penn Foundation, founded in 1945 by Otto and Phoebe Haas, is committed to expanding access to resources and opportunities that promote a more vital and just city and region for all. We do this through funding programs in the Philadelphia region in arts and culture, children and families, democracy and civic initiatives, environment and public space, and workforce training and services. Learn more at www.williampennfoundation.org.
