Performed site-specifically, April 17-20
4/17: 3:30PM seaside, Tillinghast Farm, 231 Nayatt Road Barrington, RI 02806 Performers:
4/18: 7PM India Point Park bridge
4/19: 12PM Corner of Sheldon and Hope Streets Christina Bodznick ’10.5
4/20: 8PM Helicopter pad, near intersection of South Water and Power Streets
Culminating in a performance April 21 Nicole Halmi ‘10
2-3PM, 3 floor Pembroke Hall, 172 Meeting Street, Brown University
rd

Alex Kruckman ‘10

Alphabet Soles: Language as Ground explores how language serves as a
Hollis Mickey ‘10
ground for the creation of lived experience.

Sound:
Developed by Performance Studies concentrator Hollis Mickey as a part
of her honors thesis, this performance seeks to activate artist Ann Alex Kruckman ‘10
Hamilton’s public artwork, a felted carpet patterned with phonetic
alphabets. Hamilton’s carpet, located on the third floor of Brown Film:
University’s Cogut Center in Pembroke Hall, evokes trays of traditional Zach Caldwell ‘10
letterpress woodblock type. The carpet is designed to visually echo and
sonically absorb the speaking and listening that will take place in this
lecture space, creating a ground interwoven with the tactile, oral, and
aural qualities of language.

Alphabet Soles translates that textural and textual

ground onto the body through repetitive gestures of
speaking, writing, and listening. In the public performances,
the performers work diligently to transcribe Gertrude
Stein’s “Tender Buttons” into representative shapes. Their
nearly silent actions appear to be a heightened form of
note-taking, resonant with the kind of activity that will
take place upon the carpet. The performers’ task of
transcription is punctuated with movements and Nicole, Alex, Chrissie
enunciations inspired by the grid of the carpet, the rhythm
of alphabets, and the mechanics of letterpress printing. Whether sitting or standing, the feet
of the performers become sensors—detecting language underfoot. Feet also become writing
implements, pressing the invisible marking of soles (and souls) into the ground. The
performers have adopted these systems not only for performance, but also into their lives
through daily printing, speaking, writing, and reading exercises exploring particular
alphabetic phonemes. In this way, Alphabet soles creates an ongoing dialogue or conversation
with the carpet using embodied language.
 The collaborative development of Alphabet Soles began in
January 2010. The process has led to a series of alphabetic
‘happenings’ throughout the city of Providence. These
fluxus-inspired events take the carpet off-site, activating
it in unexpected places and attracting audiences to visit
Hamilton’s work. Four distillations of these happenings
occur April 17-20. These works, which meditate on specific
letters, literally take the grid of the carpet to other
Hollis locations chosen for prominent or expressive lettering
found at the site. These itinerate performances are as much a
part of Alphabet Soles as the culminating performance on
the carpet April 21 from 2-3PM; the piece does not begin
or end at that time. After April 21, several alphabet
celebrations will further extend the performance. The
materials accreted from these public events and private
performances appear on the carpet for the culminating
performance. Along with the alphabetic sound-scape and
projection of mouths and hands articulating the alphabet,
these sculptural writings serve to communicate the
Zach, Chrissie  
powerful sensuality of language.

By making familiar actions like saying the alphabet performative and strange, the various
iterations of Alphabet Soles— from happenings to parties— attempt to engage the community in
considering how language shapes experience. The piece asks questions about linguistic
function and its fundamental role in the making of the world. But, it leaves these questions
unanswered, open for re-readings and re-interpretations by its audiences.

Ultimately, in Alphabet Soles, language becomes a ground for creative expression and
exploration. Upon the textual carpet of Ann Hamilton words and letters are not mere
abstractions or significations, but moving, affective figures, which can be felt all the way
down to our toes.

for more information, rehearsal documentation, a schedule and map of

performances visit www.languageasground.com 
Special Thanks to: John and Susan
Mickey, Rebecca Schneider, Jamie Boyle, Jo-Ann
Conklin, Kathryn Salisbury, Steven Lavallee,
Blevin Blectum, Jamie Brim, Arvid Tomakyo-
  Peters, Stephen Higa, James Flynn
Made possible in part by a grant from the Sponsored also by the letters A, C, N, and H and  
Brown University Creative Arts Council the numbers 1, 3, 14 and 8