a sound answers a sound | CARA at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo

CARA is thrilled to participate in the 36th Bienal de São Paulo with a sound answers a sound, which takes shape as a live performance by artists Ryan C. Clarke, JJJJJerome Ellis, and Kite and a newly published bilingual poetry collection.

We hope you will join us at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion on Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 11:30am as part of the Bienal’s Conjugations program. This gathering is an invitation for collective attunement. Together we listen to Clarke’s tracings of ecological memory, which ask us to attend to shifting sediment. We listen to Ellis’s composed landscapes of sound shaped by dysfluencies in time and speech. We listen to the frequencies of Kite’s braided dreams and visions, which make kin with stones, machines, and specters. We listen to the poetics of artists and writers whose poems trace paths of relation.

Alongside the performance, a set of bilingual English and Portuguese poetry chapbooks attend to what emerges as collective rhythm and resists utterance and translation. Contributors include Kimberly Alidio, Luísa Black Ellis, Natalie Diaz, Joy Harjo, basalt hsu, Imani Elizabeth Jackson, Farid Matuk, Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Asiya Wadud, and Nicole Wallace, many of whom are published in Portuguese for the first time.

a sound answers a sound responds to the Bienial’s theme—Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice—by gathering practices that engage the Earth as co-creator, thinking with land, water, and histories through embodied and situated forms of knowledge.

Ryan C. Clarke is a tonal geologist from the southeastern banks of the Mississippi. His work in the field of expanded earth science proposes counter-architectures of sociality based on the deltaic processes that built the land his home resides on. His writings and lectures have been published by e-flux journal, Rhizome, Terraforma, Harvard, and Dweller Electronics, where he is co-editor and festival curator.

JJJJJerome Ellis is an artist and a person who stutters. Recent books and records include Aster of Ceremonies (Milkweed Editions) and The Clearing (Wendy's Subway/Poetry Project/NNA Tapes). Recent solo exhibitions include Elizabeth River Project (Norfolk, Virginia) and Prosopopoeia (Vienna, Austria). Recent performances include Kunsthalle Bern (Bern, Switzerland) and Musée d'Art et de Culture Soufis MTO (Chatou, France).

Kite (Dr. Suzanne Kite) is an award winning Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, composer, and academic known for her sound and video performance with her machine-learning, hair-braid interface. Kite’s practice explores contemporary Lakota ontology through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Kite often works in collaboration with family and community members.

a sound answers a sound is organized by Manuela Moscoso, Executive and Artistic Director, with Emmy Catedral, Bookstore Director; Marian Chudnovsky, Curatorial Assistant; and Rachel Valinsky, Director of Publications.