Christopher Marianetti
Jackson Heights, New York
Christopher Marianetti is a composer and filmmaker from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work is focused on using collaborative art-making and technology to connect people across cultural and societal divides. Christopher co-founded Found Sound Nation, a music collective and non-profit creative agency working at the intersection of music and creative exchange, and is an artistic director and founder of OneBeat, a music diplomacy initiative bringing together musicians, social entrepreneurs, and artistic innovators from around the world. Christopher’s work has been presented at MASS MoCA, Carnegie Hall, TED Global, MATA Festival, WOMEX, The Lucerne Festival, Gaudeamus, Merkin Concert Hall, among others. His latest short film, “Wall Piano”, with Asma Ghanem, takes us into a daydream of a child who lives under the shadow of a separation wall, and has played at over 25 international film festivals, winning 10 awards, including at the Tampere Film Festival. Christopher’s online interactive work includes the award-winning Broken Orchestra Typewriter, which turns words, poems, conversations, nonsense, or anything typed into music and sound; as well as Telephenesis.io, an online musical game inspired by the childhood game of “telephone.”
Collaborators
Dahlak Brathwaite, Found Sound Nation, COMMERCIAL, 2024. Photo by Carmen DeCristo.
Dahlak Brathwaite, Found Sound Nation, COMMERCIAL, 2024. Photo by Carmen DeCristo.
Dahlak Brathwaite, Found Sound Nation, COMMERCIAL, 2024. Photo by Carmen DeCristo.
Dahlak Brathwaite, Found Sound Nation, COMMERCIAL, 2024. Photo by Carmen DeCristo.
Dahlak Brathwaite, Spiritrials, 2015. Photo by Carmen DeCristo.
Dahlak Brathwaite, Found Sound Nation, COMMERCIAL, 2024. Photo by Carmen DeCristo.
COMMERCIAL
Found Sound Nation (FSN) is a creative agency and artist collective that uses music-making to connect people across cultural and societal divides.
Artist BioDahlak Brathwaite
Dahlak is a theatre artist: playwright, composer, and performer. He is a Princess Grace Awardee, has been presented at The Kennedy Center and on HBO’s Def Poetry, and is a MFA graduate of NYU Tisch.
Artist BioChristopher Marianetti is a composer and filmmaker from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work is focused on using collaborative art-making and technology to connect people across cultural and societal divides.
Artist BioThis is the true story: “In my hometown, Sacramento (CA), two policemen fatally shot an unarmed Black man, Stephon Clark, in his grandparents backyard. When the news broke, I was confident that I was somehow linked to Stephon. Instead, I learned that my childhood friend was one of the cops who shot him.” – Dahlak Brathwaite
This is COMMERCIAL. Based on a true story and yet, not committed to it, COMMERCIAL is an imaginative blend of autobiography, metadrama, and alternative history. Marquise Johnson is an avatar for the playwright whose artistic principles are confronted upon learning that his childhood friend was one of the officers involved in the shooting of Stephon Clark. A play within a play unfolds as Marquise attempts to process the news through his art, beginning as an earnest, poetic meditation on his complicated connection to this hometown shooting. As media coverage wanes and the movement for Black lives becomes dormant once again, Marquise plots to capture the attention of a national audience, manifesting a real-life sensational drama – interrupted progressively by intrusive commercial segments. The piece captures what happens to a story like this when it goes from a grant proposal to network pitch; what happens to a storyteller when they go from artist to content creator; what happens to an activist when a movement becomes a business. In COMMERCIAL, the influence of commercial media and the rise of artificial intelligence intersect in their shared potential for manipulation. Set in the living room of Marquise’s apartment, the play will be performed by one actor in “virtual” communication with a host of characters constructed with generative AI audio-video technology. In an alternative present, this slightly sci-fi piece reflects the mediated, artificial communication modes that define our post-COVID, post-GPT world, giving a face to the algorithmic bubbles that crop up around us and project our digital shadows based on our impulses.
Found Sound Nation
Ridgewood, NY and Jackson Heights, NY
Found Sound Nation (FSN) is a creative agency and artist collective that uses music-making to connect people across cultural and societal divides. FSN has collaborated with music festivals worldwide, led audio production workshops around the world, from Haiti to Indonesia, and worked extensively with Carnegie Hall running music composition workshops for incarcerated youth in the Bronx and Brooklyn. For the last 12 years, FSN has partnered with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and Bang on a Can to produce OneBeat, a residency and exchange program for young professional musicians from around the globe.
Collaborators
Dahlak Brathwaite
Ridgewood, New York
Dahlak is an award-winning dramatic auteur: playwright, composer, performer, director, and filmmaker. His work has been presented at The Smithsonian, The Wallis, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, REDCAT, MCA Chicago, Ars Nova, The Public Theater, The Apollo, SXSW, and on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. Dahlak’s trilogy of works – Spiritrials (solo play), Try/Step/Trip (musical), Adapting History (documentary film) – take a personal look into the criminal justice system and the relationship between Black American music and Black American subjugation. Development of the work has been supported by CalArts, A.C.T., Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Montalvo Arts Center. Dahlak is a Princess Grace Award winner. He has received awards and support from NEFA, the Doris Duke Foundation, MAP Fund, California Arts Council, and has taught workshops internationally as a two-time fellow of the U.S. State Department. He was a 2018 United States Artist nominee and a member of The Public Theater’s 2023 Devised Theater Working Group cohort. His musical adaptation of Jason Reynolds’ young adult novel Long Way Down premiered at Olney Theater Center, broke box-office records, and was hailed by the Washington Post as “bracing and moving and funny and even fun…”. Dahlak is a graduate of NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, where he was awarded the Dean’s Full-Tuition Fellowship, and served as the Assistant Director for the national tour of the Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma. He has been a visiting professor at UC Davis and is currently part-time faculty at Berklee College of Music.