'Dispatches': Artist transforms wildfire experiences into haunting sound art

""I wanted to make a piece about fires, that just felt like a really important subject to all of our hearts, obviously.""

""There's nothing, right? Zero. And he's like, well maybe it's over here. And the worker goes and finds it.""

""It's the sort of story that reveals how disasters are experienced not only through parsing the catastrophe they bring, but through tiny recoveries: an object, a gesture, the proof that something endured.""

"Coleman's method is unusual and deeply musical. She takes spoken interviews and listens for their hidden tonalities—the cadence, syntax and melody already present in the speech.""

DISPATCHES from the CHARCOAL FOREST is a multimedia work by Merlin Coleman that combines choral performance and sound installation. It draws from interviews with cleanup workers, survivors, and dispatch audio related to the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa. The performance surrounds the audience with voices and emotions, reflecting on the impact of the fire. Coleman emphasizes the importance of facing the past and highlights personal stories, such as a worker finding a lost military medal in the ashes of a home, showcasing the small recoveries amidst disaster.

Read at East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda