ruach רוּחַ
sof kreidstein & tamar jungreis
nocturne 2022:
legacies
a space for gathering with community, ancestors, and kin belonging within the Jewish diaspora
This performance-based installation explores transcendence through intuitive vocalization and responsive sound in harmony and dissonance across temporal, spacial, and spiritual realms.
Project Statement
Voice and sound carry potential for connections that transcend linear time and feelings of distance, permeating separations between temporal and spiritual realms. When immersed in sound, we find ourselves in shared wavelengths with our communities, ancestors, and future kin. ruach רוח is a Jewish diasporic gathering space spanning across generations, communities, lands, and ways of being.
ruach רוח is born of the shared and distinct experiences the artists, Tamar Jungreis and Sof Kreidstein, hold in memory, Diaspora, queerness, and neurodivergence. Accessing interconnection and memory through affect, they reposition lack and loss as an abundance of feeling. Their intersectionality, their relationships to immigration and assimilation (as first and fourth generation canadian citizens), and the legacies of their ancestors are embodied in the timbres of their voices. This performance explores the ways voice can harness, reveal, and share the power of ruach רוח (pronounced roo-uh-ch), an ancient Hebrew word describing the sacred breath/spirit shared by all that lives.
Drawing upon Jewish folk and liturgical techniques, Tamar and Sof intuitively vocalize in wordless and meaningful expression. In this collaboration, they respond to each other, the legacies they carry, and a soundscape of Jewish belonging composed of community members’ and ancestors’ contributions. Sound guides ruach רוח as a ritual of passage over imposed barriers in time and space, while light illuminates the connections formed through it. Candles have an integral role in Jewish remembrance and mourning, though they carry hope - just as a candle shares its flame without growing dimmer, community care and ancestral guidance light the way for the future. ruach רוח reflects on this light and casts its shadows, visually echoing into a convergent space of past, present, and future.
The spirit of legacy lives in our bodies, breathing through sound and light. It resonates in resistance to silencing and erasure, echoing through community and future kin. ruach רוח is a vessel for complicated, vulnerable, and seldom represented elements of intersectional Jewishness. Nurturing intergenerational connection, ruach רוח holds memory, healing, and resilience in harmony.
Project Video
Reel of audio, visual, and performance documentation highlights (described in visual/sound description sections).
Visual Description
A large three walled room with video projections on the two parallel walls. One video is of a large number candles burning; the video is on a loop, beginning with them being lit with a match, the candles are hand dipped and made of yellow beeswax. The other video is of various overlapping shadows of the performers moving around and interacting. Their shadows vary in size, opacity, and silhouette (with changing costumes and body language). The video is composed of two projections overlapping from two angles which cast shadows of the performers and those who pass through the space. In the middle of the space there are two speakers, a microphone, and vocal processing/looping pedal. At the back wall of the space there is a small table with two Shabbat candles, a kiddush cup, and a challah with a fabric cover, a box of matches, and a bowl of salt.
Sound Description
The sound consists of an ambient backing track made with Jewish community participants' sound contributions of recordings of blessings, groups of people singing, Jewish songs and nigunim (plural of nigun - traditional wordless melodies), home videos, spoken responses, field recordings, and archival found sounds. When overlayed the sounds become a droning chord with moments of occasional legibility. The performers improvise and vocalize intuitively in response to the track and each other, inspired by Jewish folk songs, nigunim, blessings, liturgical singing, and traditional melodies from memory.
Performance Access Notes
This is a mask-mandatory space. You may walk around the performers at a distance - they will be unmasked as this performance relies on vocal endurance. To those who did not bring a mask, please take one of the KN95 masks provided, or otherwise you are asked to remain outside of the corridor.
Earplugs are available, please feel free to take a pair if needed. The audio visual description and written material are linked in the QR code below (in the bottom right corner of the sign), or may be read aloud to you by a Nocturne volunteer.
For further accommodations and access needs/concerns, please refer to the Nocturne volunteers or staff present from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.
Thank you
This project wouldn’t have been possible without our dear ones and community, and those who contributed recording to the soundscape of ruach רוח:
We are grateful to Nocturne 2022: LEGACIES, curated by Lux Habrich and Stephanie Yee, for supporting this project. Thank you to Rebecca MacKenzie-Hopkins and Tatsunari Watanabe (Public Programs and Community Engagement Coordinator) for welcoming this project at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 and supporting its presentation.
We are deeply thankful to our friends who were integral to our creative process, Alexander Lawrence for playing an integral role in our sound design, Britt Moore-Shirley (Nocturne 15th Anniversary Archive Assistant) for their advisory in technical and administrative navigation, Devon Jones for taking our headshot and prop assistance in the shadow video, and Ry Pembrooke for assisting with performance install and documentation.
Artist Bios
Born and raised in Tkaronto, Tamar Jungreis
(they/them) is a musician who recently moved to Kjipuktuk. Trying to make sense of the world as a neurodivergent, anti-capitalist, genderqueer Jew, Tamar is inspired by the strength and resilience from queer and disabled community. Coming out of isolation into a new city, Tamar is finding the most healing through connection - to the self, to the land, to people around them. In their work, they lick their wounds as an act of radical love and compassion and hope to extend this care to those around them.
Sof Kreidstein (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, workshop facilitator, and curator living in Kjipuktuk in Mi’kma’ki (so-called Halifax, Nova Scotia). They are a Jewish, neurodivergent, Mad, non-binary, white settler; growing though these intersections, and exploring them in their work. Sof gravitates toward patterns between queer ritual, abjection, and Jewish mysticism/traditions. Creative and destructive processes are entangled in their studio practice, which they experiment with in object-making, installation, poetry, media, and performance. Throughout their studio work, curatorial projects, and workshops, Sof cultivates spaces of curiosity and connection within the ideas, feelings, and communities they work with.