Making the Room Sing.
Making the Room Sing was an 8-month Brent Biennial 2022 project by Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin with women from the Asian Women Resource Centre, using sound, weaving, and storytelling for empowerment and healing.
Making the Room Sing
In 2022, artists Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin were commissioned by Eliel Jones for the Brent Biennial to lead a long-term participatory project with women from the Asian Women Resource Centre, a secure facility in Brent. Over 8 months, from June 2022 to January 2023, the group explored sound, ritual, and co-creation as tools for empowerment, healing, and collective expression.
A central part of the project involved the creation of four elemental looms, which gradually evolved into elemental harps. The women began by weaving together textiles that embodied their stories, dreams, and symbols emerging from guided meditations, creative writing, and artistic exercises. The woven pieces formed a communal tapestry, conceived as a shared garden where individual aspirations could grow together.
The transformation of the looms into harps introduced a new dimension: sound. Each harp embodied one of the four elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, and was shaped to resonate with both the body and the surrounding space. Drawing on ancient tuning systems and their cosmological significance, the harps explored sound as a mystical force, capable of invoking protection, transformation, and connection. Built for direct body contact, their vibrations travelled through the player, resonating with specific areas of the body. In this way, the instruments became living resonators, unwinding energetic pathways and activating subtle alchemical and neurological processes.
Placed in the four cardinal directions, the harps became elemental guardians, anchoring the communal space. Alongside them, Amanda designed a bespoke sound healing bench, allowing participants to rest upon it and feel the vibrations of sound directly through their bodies.
Through weaving, storytelling, music, and embodied sound, Making the Room Sing created a nurturing environment where participants could find voice, rhythm, and resonance together turning shared experiences into a collective song.
Read more about the process of building the bespoke harps and their tuning system here.
Read a response by artist and curator Stella Sidelli here.
Workshops at Metroland
As part of Making the Room Sing, Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin facilitated a series of public workshops at Metroland Gallery.
Together with participants and members of the public, they explored sound as a form of collaborative meditation, healing, and collective care.
Using elemental instruments representing earth, water, air, and fire, the workshops invited participants to create soundscapes that wove together human and more-than-human voices, fostering alchemical encounters between people, place, and environment.
These communal explorations became spaces of mutual care, where political and spiritual conversations could unfold through the shared act of listening and sounding together
