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The Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2007

GEORGE E. LEWIS
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Abstract

Pamela Z is an American composer-performer and audio artist whose use of extended vocal technique and live, body-controlled electronic processing takes place in events ranging in scale from solo events in galleries to large-scale works that combine video, audio, and live musicians, singers, and actors. Her work raises important issues regarding transnationalism, Afrodiasporicism, and identity; acoustic ecologies; the articulation of race and ethnicity; and the place of women in technological media. The essay discusses several of Z's works from the late 1990s and early 2000s, in articulation with cybertheory; the aesthetics of popular and avant-garde music, voice, language, and poetics; intermedia and performance art; and contemporary technological practices.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 57 - 77
Copyright
© 2007 The Society for American Music

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Footnotes

This essay began life as a commissioned article for the 2004 American Section of Dak'Art, the Biennial of Contemporary African Art. The author would like to thank Professors Cheryl Finley and Salah Hassan of Cornell University, who were instrumental in coordinating the American entries to the Biennial, for the initial commission for the creation of this piece, and for providing permission for the publication of this expanded version.

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