Conceived as a transient experience, Karaoke in the Cemetery creates a platform for participants to express emotions like grief and rage through the act of singing together. By bringing this intimate, vulnerable, and potentially loud activity into the cemetery, the project works to create an atmosphere of impromptu opportunity and collaborative creation. Participants will be invited to sing, listen, dance, or make a raucous or emotional mess together, shattering cultural expectations that grief should be kept silent.

As an artist, my work often takes the form of a collaboration with the public and I’m interested in how Karaoke can provide both a catharsis for individuals and a collective demonstration of our shared humanity. Music is deeply nourishing, and audio cues serve as a bridge to our memories and shared experiences. Singing, especially in a group, can open a channel for mourning and renewal. I hope this project serves to remind people that hope and sorrow can coexist, that both can be expressed—and perhaps transformed—through music.

For years, I’ve been dreaming about creating this project for the cemetery to reimagine how we engage with grief, memory, and communal expression. Like my previous works, the project centers on experiences of listening, commemoration, and community, enlisting the audience as collaborators to help determine the content and create an archive to memorialize it once it has passed.

Prior to the launch of Karaoke in the Cemetery at Congressional on August 1, I’m creating a web site where visitors can build a roster of song options and sign up for the event. This site will serve as an initial form of engagement, a document co-created and curated by the public. At the end of the project, the online song collection becomes an archive, a living repository that will be made accessible for the public use. As with all my work, I seek to foster individual and collective engagement that will last well beyond the scope of one project.