PGHwrites: “unmade place” (Sound-Text Experiments) with Varun Ravindran, 7D & Dade Lemanski, Viii Dorsey & Drew Collins, trē seguritan abalos & Jenna Peng

Photo Credits: Paul Peng, Art by Sweater Photography, Ocean Capewell, Troxum.

Photo Courtesies: Jenna Peng, Vii Dorsey, Dade Lemanski, trē seguritan abalos, Drew Collins, 7D.

unmade place is a space for experiments in sonifying text and textualizing sound. Curated by sound improviser trē seguritan abalos, the series features local improvisers and poets in bookstores, basements, and coffee shops across Pittsburgh. This iteration will feature reading-performances by Varun Ravindran, 7D and Dade Lemanski, Viii Dorsey and Drew Collins, and trē seguritan abalos and Jenna Peng. 

Curator Notes:

trē: I began the series as research in disrupting abstraction when sound remains a sound, when instances of playing do not instantly signify body, place, time. To improvise as insistence on time and its unmaking, to play as displacement—beyond this, what other forms of movement are possible (as body and not, in fractals or retraced) as language is morphed and submerged within sound? What does the presence of a voice convey or what can it erase? 

Jenna: I didn’t know it’d be so hard to be a sound and not just words on a page. These are words said by an interlocutor of Jota Mombaça in her art film Waterwill. As a writer, I am an improviser. As an improviser, I started increasingly going to experimental sound shows, where I’d see a performer throw lozenges (acorns) at her violin, or watch a man who was really a busted radio, or listen to trē sound not unlike themself—traces of sound happening to a body // a body tracing space. Listening, I felt most distinctly that language was an instrument, to be played and not just played with. I looked toward polyphony, free jazz, and noise for ways of organizing language, the way sound organizes itself, the way sound can organize the self. Because, as Varun says, “Every moment is polyphonic.” Every I is murmuration, words overlapping quiet, quiet lapping silence (think: running, think: water). I’m trying to hold it all open without coming only apart.

This program is followed by a public reception with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and drinks for all attendees and artists. 

About the Artists:

7D is a multi-instrumentalist composer, performer, and recording artist living and working in Pittsburgh, PA. Their body of work moves across experimental music, noise, film composition, sculptural performance, and poetry.

trē seguritan abalos (tree) is a sound improviser and child of Filipino immigrants from San Jose, CA, who often plays with flutes, found objects, and field recordings. As a collaborator trē’s playing ranges from live sound collage and film scores to ambient soundscapes and free jazz. Drawing from studies with devon osamu tipp, Susie Ibarra, and Alberto Almarza, their sound merges classical techniques with deep listening and free improvisation into textural evocations of dis/placement and examinations of breath. Projects include live scores for Pittsburgh Sound + Image; performances for JADED, Anthropology of Motherhood, and Trust Visual Arts; experimental duo “pterratactl” with Petra Floyd; durational electroacoustic soundscapes with Herman Pearl at PearlArts Movement & Sound and How Things Are Made at The Space Upstairs; live music for Confluence Ballet by Joshua Malavé; and other forms of research in listening rooms and space for works-in-progress.

Drew Collins completed their master’s in double bass performance at Carnegie Mellon University, studying under Micah Howard. Born in Cincinnati, OH, and reared in Columbus, OH, Drew began playing double bass in fourth grade in elementary school. By the sixth grade, they also joined the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra and by eighth grade, the Urban Strings Columbus Youth Orchestra until they finished high school. Drew spent a summer abroad and multiple summers at Interlochen Center for the Arts. They attended the Cleveland Institute of Music for their undergraduate education, studying under Derek Zadinsky. Drew is a passionate electric bass player as well, collaborating with many different musicians. They have worked in free improv, jazz, funk, gospel, and psychedelic rock.

Viii Dorsey is an interdisciplinary audio-visual collage artist and medicinal sound (folk) scientist from Pittsburgh, PA, with an eclectic style and experimental approach. Getting her start in poetry, speech-language pathology, holistic wellness, and sound-healing and frequency therapy, Viii offers a unique perspective fusing together multi-layered combinations of sounds, symbols, and concepts to convey the abstract reflections and ponderings of the heart with fluidity and versatility. Viii weaves a multitude of mediums into conversation with each other through an Afro-futuristic lens on time and space. Her creative practice often centers around themes of origins, overcoming, luminescence, and liberation. Viii embodies an approach to art that is as unbounded as the freedom we seek for ourselves.

Dade Lemanski is a writer, teacher, and nightlife worker. Their writing on whiteness, Jewishness, Appalachia, and desire has appeared in Public Books, World Literature Today, and In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, as well as in the anthologies A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969 and There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists. They write the newsletter SINKHOLE//GLORYHOLE and more recently have collaborated with friends and sound artists around Pittsburgh. Their first book, Full Life Full Agonies, is forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky.

Jenna Peng writes poetry and criticism, often both at the same time. Her writing circles otherness, closeness, and aloneness, compelled/repelled by the kinds of things we do to/for each other. She indulges in writing about writing, thinking about thinking, not knowing about knowing, and is in search of a Center for Stray Thought. As part of the collective Jenn E. Zhang (with other half Elina Zhang), she co-curates Read-Shifting Web, an Asian diasporic reading room, and co-teaches Anti-Ante-Auntie-Seminars, writing workshops in response to art shows. Across her practices, she is intent on learning how to play well with others.

Varun Ravindran was born in Chennai, India. His debut, Betweenness, was published in 2025 via Baobab Press.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is open for brunch from 9:30 to 2 p.m. and for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. Please visit OpenTable or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.