About the imagery (Sarah Krukowski)

Eggs, shot on glass from below and above, are the primary image material for Chalazae. When I was eight, I called the chalazae the “thingy.” It is actually the anchor that holds down the yolk membrane and separates the yolk from the white of an egg. Throughout my childhood, I refused to eat any egg that had a thingy—my mother obliged me and removed the thingies of any egg she hoped to feed me. I was convinced the thingy (the chalazae) was a baby chicken, or at least the starting point for one. My mother took me to her biology lab a lot, and there were always eggs and chickens in various stages of development. I saw chicken embryos on yolks and thingies nearby. That was enough to empower the chalazae and invest in it a series of meanings and capacities that continue to be largely imagined. I am particularly interested in the cellular, cosmic and embryonic forms evoked in Chalazae.

About the music (Bruce Pennycook)

Inspired by Samantha Krukowski’s dramatic image transformations I sought an other-worldly, dramatic sonic domain for Chalazae. I made contrasting recordings of African hand drums and electric guitars and subjected these, along with other sound resources, to aggressive signal treatments.

…She began to brood the eggs, to warm the top of the knee. She brooded one day, brooded a second, then brooded a third, too. Now, because of that the mother of the water, mother of the water, virgin of the air, feels burning hot, her skin scorched: she thought her knee was burning, all her sinews melting. Suddenly she twitched her knee, made her limbs tremble; the eggs tumbled into the water, are sent into the waves of the sea; the eggs cracked to pieces, broke to bits. The eggs do not get into the ooze; the bits do not get mixed up with the water. The bits were turned into fine things, the pieces into beautiful things: the lower half of one egg into the earth beneath, the top half of another egg into the heavens above. The top half of one yolk gets to glow like the sun, the top half of one white gets to gleam palely as the moon; any mottled things on an egg, those become stars in heaven, Anything black on an egg, those indeed become clouds in the sky.