The Principle of Alloys

Abstract Transdisciplinary artist James Gordon Williams writes about two improvised performances on former Cook County Department of Corrections, Chicago, prison bars in an ongoing collaboration with artist Maria Gaspar. Williams reflects on the bar performances that were featured in Gaspar's 2023 installations and solo exhibitions at El Museo Del Barrio and the Institute of Arts and Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, respectively. Discussing how each iteration of the bar performance evolved to include conventional instruments, he documents how his burgeoning understanding of the Ifá orisha system, abolition geography, and theories on the agency of metal helps him think through his relationship with carceral debris to create an abolitionist soundscape in real time.