In Praise of Noise

A lecture-performance on the generative and radical potential of noise with Kameelah Janan Rasheed.

In Praise of Noise is an emergent lecture-performance exploring the generative and radical potential of noise. As we listen for what exceeds the signal — what escapes intelligibility and standard perception — we look to instances presumed to be failures: latency, misalignment, and ectopia. In this turn toward error as method, noise becomes an invitation to other ways of knowing. Resisting the temptation to worship at the altar of coherence and immediacy, we consider strategies of being out of sync, non-compliant, and excessive. These modes of being are not episodic spectacles of refusal; rather, they are disorienting conditions sustained not through cohesion, but through dispersal.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner and a death doula in training. Her middle name, Janan, meaning heart and soul, comes from the Arabic trilateral root (J-N-N / جنان) evoking that which is unmoored, veiled, and wayward. Accordingly, she explores the politics and poetics of non-compliance and disobedience across written, spoken, and visual language. A "language person" (Paul Soulellis), she "gives language a body" (Chang Yuchen) through her large-scale installations, multichannel video works, publications, software, performance, public archives, and learning platforms.

She has received awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021) and a Creative Capital Award (2022), and has had exhibitions worldwide. Rasheed is a full-time critic at Yale University’s School of Art and the inaugural Charles Gaines Chair at CalArts. Through KJR Studios, she founded The Little Octopus School and Orange Tangent Study, initiatives centered on collaborative learning and institutional experimentation.