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Call for Submission
We invited people with connections to Southern Illinois to contribute stories and reflections of the pandemic. Excerpts of these submissions were incorporated into a multimedia performance that took place at Carbondale Community Arts on June 12, 2021. This call is now closed.
Please consider sharing poems, written stories, diary entries, or oral histories. You may record yourself (a cell phone is fine) and send your audio or video recording to adaptiveresponse@nonopera.org. We also would be happy to interview you via Zoom, if you prefer. Please use that address to contact us. Here are some prompts for self recording. Feel free to use these or your own:
- What has the pandemic meant to you?
- When did your life first change because of the pandemic?
- How has your life changed throughout the year?
- How have you adapted?
- In what ways are you finding hope?
- What changes do you anticipate in this next year?
By submitting to this project, you allow us to use excerpts of your recording for Adaptive Response. Submissions may not be included in their entirety, and we cannot guarantee that all submissions will be included in the performance. We will also, optionally, share the original recordings in an archive on this website. Please indicate if you would like yours to be included.
SIU Carbondale
These recordings were made at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on April 1, 2021 with students from Jay Needham’s Sound Art and Practice class and his colleague Professor Frumkin’s Beginning Fiction class. Honna Veerkamp interviewed participants and Tyler Horn. recorded the audio.
Cobden
These recordings were made at Taqueria Pequeña on April 16 and April 23, 2021. Daniel Rodríguez interviewed participants, and Jay Needham recorded the audio.
Individual Submissions
Saxon Metzger contributed this perspective.
Contribute your story
About the Project
Adaptive Response is a work for micro-FM and live performance that considers the ways we respond to an ever-shifting landscape of risk and adaptation during the pandemic. Drawing from regionally gathered, pre-recorded stories, live music, and audience commentary, artists Jay Needham and Honna Veerkamp live-compose an evolving radiophonic stream. Designed to be performed in community parking lots, Adaptive Response imagines the interiority of the automobile as a new space for socially-distanced listening and isolated civic-engagement. Listeners are invited to tune in locally on their car stereos or join virtually from anywhere in the world.
About the Artists
Jay Needham
Jay Needham is an artist, musician, writer-editor and cultural producer who utilizes multiple creative platforms to produce his works, many of which have a focus on sound and site specific field research. As a hearing-divergent person, Needham makes work that often involves sensing and experiencing sound across many modalities. His sound art, works for radio, visual art, performances and installations have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. Needham is the founding co-editor of Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, published by The University of California Press. He is a Professor in the Department of Radio, Television and Digital Media at Southern Illinois University and he received his MFA from The School of Art at California Institute of the Arts.
Honna Veerkamp
Honna Veerkamp is a community-oriented artist and educator. Her specialties include audio and video documentary, painting, and socially engaged art. Honna’s work explores natural and human-made environments and celebrates creative resistance—from tiny interventions to grassroots social justice movements, and the stories in between. Honna earned a Media Arts MFA at Southern Illinois University in 2015 and a diploma in Audio Engineering at the Institute for Audio Research in 2002. She was a CAT fellow in 2017-2018 and currently serves on the alumni advisory board. She has taught audio, video, writing, and fine art at university and community settings.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
