Hanna and Fiona, Cherry Road. Photo: Wendy Jacob, 2016

Vibrations: From Rio and Cherry Road

Wendy Jacob

We are seated in a kind of outdoor amphitheater on top of a mountain in Rio. On one side is a sprawling favela, on the other a steep cliff and the sea. We are waiting for a movie to begin. A doctor in a white jacket stands in front of the crowd and fields questions about prostate cancer. A young man wants to know if premature ejaculation is a symptom. The crowd explodes with laughter. The doctor says probably not, and concludes his remarks by encouraging everyone to practice safe sex. The show begins. A video, made by a collective of young Brazilian artists, Mulheres de Pedra (Women of Stone), is projected onto a whitewashed wall. I marvel at how the assembled crowd seamlessly transitions from patients to art patrons, and how it’s all happening out in public.¹

In Midlothian, Scotland, it is chilly and gray, the opposite of Rio. The sliding glass doors of the Cherry Road Learning Centre – a publicly run day centre for adults with complex developmental, cognitive disabilities and autism – open into a bright, high-ceilinged room that smells slightly of disinfectant.²

A petite woman with a strawberry blonde bob embraces one of the cast iron columns that support the ceiling. She circles, embraces, and occasionally kisses it. A man stands nearby, smiling. In the parlance of Cherry Road the woman, Fiona, is a service user. She doesn’t use spoken language, but shows her approval with a thumb’s up. The man, John, is a care provider and has known Fiona for a long time. He speaks with thick Scottish burr. They understand each other beautifully.

I am the third person in this trio: a visitor from the US, a guest of Artlink, an artist commissioned to develop a piece for Cherry Road. The column that Fiona is embracing is the result. In other contexts I would call it art, but here at Cherry Road it is also something else: entertainment? therapy? a reflection of the many hours we all spent here?

Although the column that Fiona is circling appears silent and inert, it is noisy with the recorded rumblings of the centre’s washing machine. If you put your ear against the column and circle its girth with your arms, you can hear the sound with your whole body, especially in the final spin cycle. I engineered the column for Donald and Nicola, two service users who have spent the majority of their adult lives at Cherry Road. Like Fiona, they don’t use conventional language, and cannot tell you how they are feeling, or what they like or would choose to do. The care staff, however, have worked with them for a long time and understand the nuances of gesture and expression. For over a year-and-a-half, the care staff and I paid attention to the sounds that Donald and Nicola paid attention to, and created a playlist of what appeared to be their favorites. The playlist includes the hums and rumbles of the centre’s Coke machine, washing machine and electric teakettle going through their paces, and the voices of Donald and Nicola’s care staff calling their names. Donaaald. . . Niiiicolaaaaa . . . NicoLA! With the help of a sound engineer, I recorded the sounds and placed them in the column where they could be experienced anytime and without assistance.

Fig 1. Sound Diary entries. Photo: Wendy Jacob, 2015

Fig 2. Adriana Minu recording sound, Cherry Road. Photo: Wendy Jacob, 2016

The lobby at Cherry Road is where the institution is at its most public. Visitors gather, deliveries are made, and drivers pick up or drop off service users. In the morning and late afternoon it is abuzz with people coming and going, saying hello and goodbye. Donald and Nicola are a part of this public. The column of sound is for them, and stands as a public testament to their desires. But it’s not just for them. Fiona likes it, and I’ve been told that the staff and other service users do too. The column is for everyone who walks through the lobby doors.

On top of the mountain in Rio, the public heath discussion and video screening evolve into a samba party, with the audience, artists, and neighborhood children all dancing into the night. At Cherry Road, Donald and Nicola are the DJs: they choose the sounds. I am grateful to Cristina, Izabela, Jessica and Zacca, and to Adriana, Alison, Brenda, Dawn S, Dawn H, Hanna, John, Kingsley, Lisa, Liz, Miriam, Rachel and Zara for the possibility of these exchanges.

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Wendy Jacob
Is an American artist whose work includes sculpture, installation and design, and explores relationships between the body and the physical world. Her works include walls and ceilings that breathe, chairs that embrace, and floors that resonate with sub-audible sound. She has worked with engineers, athletes, and musicians; with animal scientist Temple Grandin and with autistic children. In a recently project, working with Artlink, Edinburgh, she has explored the physics of everyday ambient sounds in the context of a day center for adults with profound learning disabilities. Jacob’s works have appeared in the Kunsthaus Graz, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.
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¹ See films were screened at Macquinho, Boa Viagem, Niterói curated by JV Santos. See the Intervention section of this magazine for more information and images of the films shown [http://institutomesa.org/revistamesa/edicoes/5/portfolio/jv-santos-en/?lang=en]

²Cherry Learning Centre offers tailored and personalized experiences supporting adults with learning disabilities and adults with autism. Formerly based on a more traditional model of care, the service recast itself in collaboration with leading arts and disabilities organization, Artlink. This enabled the service to develop imaginative and enriching experiences for people and has significantly improved how the service supports people with very complex needs, leading to sustained positive change and contributing to reduced use of health and care services.