“Dithyrambalina” is an ambitious project by artist Caledonia Dance Curry (aka Swoon) to build a house in New Orleans that is a playable musical art installation. The project is being developed with the help of New Orleans Airlift, an artist exchange that “exports” New Orleans artists and “imports” visiting artists like Brooklyn-based Swoon. Funding for Dithyrambalina is being raised on Kickstarter.
Even before the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had been afflicted by huge numbers of run down properties and abandoned lots. These tragic symbols are the backdrop of city-wide dysfunction, but they are also the tableau in front of which New Orleans’ rich musical and visual heritage parades and performs. This project is an imaginative attempt to redress the futility of this blight by finding within it vast resources of salvageable materials. By turning our salvaged construction into a music box that is free, public, and playful we are inviting the wider community to imagine and participate in a new landscape of potential and possibility.
Swoon is perhaps best known for her wonderful Swimming Cities, floating ramshackle sculptures that have floated down various rivers and waterways in the United States and Europe.