Trading Earth

A soundwalk created in collaboration with RISD Museum staff to accompany the exhibition Trading Earth. The soundwalk explores how familiar foodstuffs (coffee, sugar, tea, chocolate, and spices) made their way onto our tables. Drawn from more than 25 nations across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa, the objects in the exhibition focus on the global trade of consumable commodities and the works made to store, serve, and ingest them.

Like many of the goods they contained, these ceramic vessels were marketed via vast international trade routes, resulting in the exchange, imitation, and appropriation of decoration, design, and technology. The soundwalk personalizes these politics of movement. We did all of the creative and technical work on this piece.