Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon

An opera of the elemental, of pre-deities, and illusions of containment, this performance emerges through a story of transitional states. Using an improvised language of disintegration, How does it feel to look at nothing is an embodied pre-origin story of a Deity of Nothingness. An opera of the elemental, of pre-deities, and illusions of containment, this interdisciplinary performance emerges through a story of transitional states. Composer-performers, multi-instrumentalists, and vocalists Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon co-create this work of composition, improvisation, dance, and ritual. Grounded in Holland and yuniya’s shared spiritual lineages and lives as partners, the opera explores the forces and conditions that compel life’s emergence, and the spiritual act of meaning-making during epochs of decay. Holland and yuniya (who are married) are engaged with questions of queer parenthood, trans pregnancy, and contemporary life as trans artists of color. They are navigating the real-life, emotionally rich, and spiritually complex socio-political terrain of queer-trans family building during a period of rising American fascism, political disintegration, and global anti-trans violence. To reflect and embody the queer possibilities that emerge even within overwhelming cycles of decay, the artists have developed an improvised practice called Language Disintegration, a lens through which vocal performance, movement, sonic textures, composition, and ritual technologies–are transformed. The opera features Holland and yuniya as soloists and multi-instrumentalists whose performance practices draw from diverse lineages, including American Experimentalism, Korean Shamanic Ritual, Channeled Singing, Punk and Hardcore, and Contemporary Opera. Throughout the opera, Holland and yuniya embody fluid and entangled identities: elemental force, angel witness, sounding body, deity, child, parent, memory. Through an iterative and syncretic practice, they create an improvisational, deconstructed language both familiar and unknown, able to hold their many shifting roles. Photo Credit: Dane DuPuis