Wired Digital Guide

I am honored to welcome you to Wired.

Tonight’s performance is the culmination of many artists’ brilliance, passion, commitment, and work. After some experimental residencies at New York Live Arts and Jacob’s Pillow, the majority of Wired was built in 2020 – 21, in a bubble residency in the San Francisco Bay Area at Z Space theater. In the shelter of this generative space, we lived together, on and off, for almost a year, and we made a work that I believe is transformative.

Wired honors the race, disability, and gender stories of barbed wire in the United States. Wired began when I rounded a corner in the Whitney Museum of Modern Art; I took in Melvin Edwards’s sculpture Pyramid Up and Down Pyramid (1969). This graceful, gut-wrenching piece changed my world. I wanted to get closer to the wire itself.

Barbed wire is a consistent, yet sometimes invisible, part of our lives. Urban, suburban, and rural, barbed wire defines borders and outlines so many territories, literal and figurative. In 2019, the wire resonated as we struggled with so many images of prisons, residential institutions, and detention centers. In 2020, as the US witnessed an uprising against police brutality, more images of barbed wire circulated in our media.

Wired is the company’s first aerial work. Learning to fly has been a joyful and, yes, sometimes terrifying experience. The engineering and technical know-how necessary for a show like this is staggering, and throughout the process we’ve been supported by some of the field’s most experienced professionals. Thank you to our rigging consultants and automation operators for keeping us safe!

The work you will experience here emerges from the hearts and minds of many artists. In addition to the Kinetic Light artists—Jerron Herman, Laurel Lawson, Michael Maag, and myself—two composers, LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell and Ailís Ní Riaín, wrote the scores. Josephine Shokrian designed the sculpture pieces and the barbed wire props that encircle both bodies and set. If you are listening to Wired audio description, you are experiencing the art of Shannon Finnegan, Cheryl Green, Dylan Keefe, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Shankojam, Andy Slater, Nathan Geering, and Mo Pickering-Symes. I am incredibly grateful for these collaborators and their integral contributions.

A world has grown up around Wired. I am delighted to invite you in. Welcome.

—Alice Sheppard

Wired honors the race, gender, and disability histories of barbed wire in the United States. In places, Wired engages questions of race, power, and dominance. It also touches on questions of incarceration, disability, and institutionalization.

Kinetic Light believes in equitable, artistic access. We have crafted this performance around the commitment to access in the design of the show, as well as the experience of gathering an audience. If you have any needs or questions, there are ushers and Shed staff in the lobby. To get in touch after the performance, email info@kineticlight.org.

If you need to leave the theater at any point in the performance, please do so. Quiet spaces are available throughout the performance. You are welcome to reenter whenever you are ready.

Section 1

The wire enters and creates the space.
Music: LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell

Section 2

Reflection on the boundaries of wired space.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 3

DeKalb, IL farmer Joseph Glidden is one of the inventors of the barbs used in barbed wire. According to folklore, he found that animals were more severely wounded when they approached fence barbs he had twisted from his wife’s hair pins. That twisted design is still used today.

Content Notice: This section engages whiteness, power, and Black hair.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 4

The intricacy and beauty of barbed wire.
Music: LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell

Section 5

Reflection on the boundaries of wired space.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 6

Barbed wire became an industrial phenomenon, building great fortunes for some.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 7

In rural areas too poor for actual telegraph wire, barbed wire connected people with the larger world.
Music: LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell

Section 8

Reflection on the boundaries of wired space.
Music Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 9

From inside and outside the wire.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 1

Barbed wire creates and belongs to the sexualities of certain communities.

Content Notice: This section engages with power, gender, and sexuality.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 2

The United States has some of the most punitive and brutal practices and policies around incarceration and institutionalization.

Content Notice: This section engages America’s race and disability history of incarceration and institutionalization.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

Section 3

A moment of personal reflection.
Music: LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell

Section 4

The wire becomes art.
Music: LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell

Section 5

The art creates connection.
Music: Ailís Ní Ríain

To learn more about the history of barbed wire, we recommend the following resources:

• The Devil’s Rope: A Cultural History of Barbed Wire by Alan Krell
  
• The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meaning of Barbed Wire by Lyn Ellen Bennett and Scott Abbott
  
• Barbed Wire: A Political History by Olivier Razac, translated by Jonathan Kneight
  
• Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity by Reviel Netz
  
• Barbed Wire Identification Encyclopedia by Harold L. Hagemeier
  
• “Melvin Edwards” article by Michael Brenson, for BOMB
  

Organizations:

• The Glidden Homestead & Historical Center (DeKalb, Illinois)
  
• Ellwood House Museum (DeKalb, Illinois)
  
• Devil’s Rope Museum (McLean, Texas)
  
• Kansas Barbed Wire Museum (La Crosse, Kansas)