The Silent Unseen Audio Tour:
An Embodied Introduction to Asian American History
The Silent Unseen Audio Tour: An Embodied Introduction to Asian American History offers a space for reflection on diaspora, community, and solidarity within the Asian American community and beyond.
Set at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Park, the audio tour traces Asian American histories in the United States, offering a space for reflection on diaspora and community. The tour offers easily accessible education that centers building solidarity within and beyond Asian communities, moving beyond the moniker “Stop Asian Hate” and into a deeper, more grounded understanding of Asian American history.
What the tour is like…
Guided by narration, the audio tour invites participants to consider feelings, sensations, and the lived experiences of Asian American immigrants in relation to the space and architecture of the museum and Flushing Meadows Park. ayo ohs, along with special guests Betty Yu, Grace M. Cho, Helen Hyun-Kyung Park, Helen Zia, and Julman Tolentino, guide you through a journey of embodiment, somatic contemplation, and family histories. After experiencing the audio tour, participants are invited to leave a story of their own, creating an archive of oral histories and expanding the scope and scale of Asian American history.
How to access the tour…
The tour will be released on May 1, 2024 for AAPI Heritage month and will be available on the Gesso App indefinitely. The tour has a run time of 1.5 hours and is free and open to all. It is recommended for ages 16 and up.
Check back here after May 1st for the link!
How the project developed…
The audio tour was conceived in the Engaging Artists’ fellowship at More Art, a NYC-based public art organization, and developed further through a 5-week art residency at Yaddo.
It is inspired by conversations in community, activities with PISAB’s Asian Affinity group, and a lifetime of experiences.
The audio tour is the first part of a multi-tiered larger project, The Silent Unseen, exploring, unsilencing, and uplifting the voices of the Asian American diaspora.
What’s Next…
On May 11, 2024 More Art and the lead artist, ayo ohs, will lead groups on an activation of the audio tour beginning in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Participants will be invited to experience the audio tour in small groups, each starting in 30 minute increments closing with a group gathering and discussion with ayo ohs and Grace Sanghyun Nam. Small snacks will be provided. Interested participants can register here.
In the Fall, ayo ohs will present a panel discussion with Grace M. Cho, author of Tastes Like War, and Faye Yuan, producer of Queens Memory Podcast: Our Major Minor Voices, and other guests to discuss creative telling of Asian American histories.
Co-presented by:
More Art
With Support From:
Groundworks Space
Yaddo
Our Community Partners:
Asian Boss Ladies
Chinese Adoptee Alliance
Glow Cultural Center
The Kitchen Project
Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York
Written, narrated, and scored by:
ayo ohs
Mixed and Mastered by: Erica Huang
Fundraising Coordinator: Meghann Trago
Special Guests:
Betty Yu, Grace M. Cho, Helen Hyun-Kyung Park, Helen Zia, Julman Tolentino
Thank you!
Andrew Schneider, Cynthia Chen, Dylan Gauthier, George Emilio Sanchez, Grace Nam, Lisa Gold, Madhusmita Bora, Madison Markham, Mel Hsu, Sarah Esmi, Shona Masarin
About the Artist
ayo ohs (A.O./they/she) is a socially engaged artist and director, working in sound, movement, and healing arts. ayo has presented choreography, original songwriting, and spatialized audio in venues throughout NY and San Francisco, where their work was described as “feisty, clever and poignant” by the SF Bay Guardian. ayo was a close collaborator with Andrew Schneider in performance and direction with AFTER (The Public Theatre), NERVOUS/SYSTEM and NOWISWHENWEARE (BAM Next Wave 2018, 2022). From 2013-2018, ayo was a collaborative performer with Faye Driscoll, including performances at the Venice Biennale, the Walker Art Center, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, and other international and national tours. As an anti-racist organizer and somatic healer, ayo is a co-facilitator of Radical Love and Equity, a founding member of Movement Research’s Artist of Color Council, and has worked at many community-based non-profits including the Audre Lorde Project under the direction of Healing Justice pioneer Cara Page. They hold a BFA in theater from NYU with a minor in political science, summa cum laude, and have studied Somatic Abolitionism with Resmaa Menakam and music production at Berklee College of Music Online. They live in Lenapehoking/ Brooklyn, NY.
More About The Silent Unseen Project
The Silent Unseen is an interdisciplinary, socially-engaged art project, intended to map untold stories of the Asian femme diaspora and address issues of invisibility and silence related to the Asian American femme identity.
Referring to the ways racism against Asians is generally imperceptible,The Silent Unseen aims to reveal the concealed and unspoken nature around immigration experiences, and create spaces to heal, understand, and build solidarity between Asian American ethnic communities using education, awareness, and art.
The project is multi-tiered, with many opportunities for public engagement including an audio tour, an interview project, and somatic and vocal workshops. The project will culminate in evenings of performance and community ritual (estimated 2025).
The 3 components in development are: an audio tour tracing histories and personal stories of Asian immigration (supported by More Art’s Engaging Artists Fellowship, estimated 2024), Stories and Songs: an EP release documenting the lead artist’s personal journey through the material (estimated Fall 2024), and an ongoing interview project, where witnesses to the above projects have an opportunity to tell their untold story of Asian immigration.
The Silent Unseen
more about ayo and the inspiration for the project
Other Projects
anti-oppression yoga
a network of free and donation-based videos centering liberation through movement
facilitation and offerings
facilitation in vocal and somatic arts, injury-recovery, anti-racism, and vision/mission development