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Ellen Band’s Portal of Prayer
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN
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Ellen Band advocates listening. She belongs to a sect of aurally inclined artists who deal not with pencils or paint or photographs but with sound. In the past, she’s taken quotidian sonic events — train roars, bird chirps, a radiator hiss — and layered the tones to create new soundscapes. In her latest sound installation, Portal of Prayer, Band moves from the train yard to the churches — and synagogues and mosques and temples and abbeys — to explore the sonic properties of prayer. Commissioned by ICA/Vita Brevis, a program at the Institute of Contemporary Art that aims to get art into public settings by commissioning artists to create temporary works of art, Portal of Prayer runs from March 2 through June 5 at the Boston Public Library, Logan Airport, and the Codman Square Health Center. Band spent the last year and a half visiting more than a dozen places of worship in and around Boston, from Trinity Church to Congregación León de Judá, from Chua Viet-Nam to the Peace Abbey to Congregation Kehilath Israel, culling more than 40 hours of recorded prayer and sacred music. She listened to the material for hours in a process she refers to as marinating, then created a score, condensing it into a 78-minute composition with seven thematic sections. "It’s like making a symphony." And instead of strings and horns, she’s using psalms, songs, and gongs. The piece opens with an Overture and closes with a 25-minute section called "Reunion" in which "all the places participating have a final voice." For the final section, she says, "I made these four units of sound — choral, organ, gong, and bell — which I call clouds, and I wanted the different voices to come in and out of these floating clouds of sound." Yet though floating clouds of sound evoke images of sonic heaven, Band emphasizes that the project is not trying to preach any one doctrine — or any doctrine at all: "It’s not proselytizing. It’s not saying that you should take on religion." Rather, she’s hoping to demonstrate that "prayer is human and natural. I’m trying to show a confluence of voices, a converging of traditions." And even though "the sounds of religious experience have been decontextualized, they still convey power and depth." Prayer, she suggests, "is not limited to a specific formal setting." But what happens when you take prayer out of its formal setting and put it in public? What of the cultural premise that separates church and state? "I don’t know. I guess I’m going to find out whether they’re bridgeable." And even if church and state aren’t bridgeable, Band suggests a possibility for a different type of connection: "If people visited different churches, temples, and mosques, then this would go a long way to further human understanding and break down barriers." Portal of Prayer runs March 5 through June 2 in the northwest corridor of the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street in Copley Square (call 617-536-5400); the Codman Square Health Center lobby, 450 Washington Street in Dorchester (call 617-436-6795); and the elevated walkway between Central Parking and Terminal E at Logan International Airport (call 800-23-LOGAN). "Prayer in Public," a free Ford Hall Forum panel discussion with Ellen Band, Victor Kazanjian, and Wendy Kaminer and moderated by Phoenix senior writer Dan Kennedy, takes place March 16 at 6:30 p.m. at Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street in Boston; call (617) 353-5800.
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