The November installment of The Loft Hour transformed the Arts Reseach Center into a shared space of sound, movement, and collective breath as Xandra Ibarra (Art Practice) and Matthew Evan Taylor (Music) joined Anne Walsh (Art Practice) for a powerful hour of performance and conversation hosted by the Arts Research Center.
Rather than beginning with documentation or discussion, Matthew Evan Taylor invited the audience directly into his practice through a live, participatory performance of an Afronuma-inspired “Respire” etude, as he described; a work rooted in his concept of AfroPnuemaism, a musical philosophy that centers breath as the primary organizing force of sound.
Taylor guided the room through collective breathing, vocalizations, and spoken text. The performance moved through stillness, rhythm, and shared sound, ultimately collapsing the boundary between the performer and audience. As Taylor explained, AfroPnuemaism emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in a time when breath itself had become both fragile and politicized, serving as a way to honor human vulnerability, community, and presence.
As a saxophonist, Taylor described how classical training often discourages audible breathing:
“One of the things you come to understand about playing classical music is that the composer really doesn’t want you to breathe. And if you do breathe, hide that shame.”
Following Taylor’s sound-based work, Xandra Ibarra enacted a striking participatory performance that radically disrupted the energy and order of the lecture space itself. Audience members were invited to join Ibarra in stacking chairs, interrupting the expected arrangement of bodies, furniture, and attention. What began as a physical disruption inside the room extended outdoors, as Ibarra led the group into a one-of-a-kind procession, migrating the performance beyond the boundaries of the formal Loft Hour setting.
Following the performance, Anne Walsh, who framed the afternoon not as a traditional moderation but as a shared experience, invited reflection rather than formal questioning. She noted how the physical rearrangement of chairs before the performance became its own sonic prelude, mirroring the density and release present in both Taylor’s and Ibarra’s practices.
Audience members reflected on vulnerability, ritual, and preparation. Taylor shared that improvisation has taught him to embrace immediacy, often performing without fixed rituals all while trusting presence over polish. He also spoke about redefining the role of the audience as “witnesses” rather than passive observers, drawing inspiration from James Baldwin’s understanding of witnessing as a charged and ethical position.
Throughout the hour, the connectivity between Taylor’s sonic practice and Xandra Ibarra’s performance-based work remained palpable, even when their methods diverged. Walsh observed that either artist’s work could have come first, as both moved fluidly between calm and intensity, ritual and disruption, intimacy and collective force.
As attendees gathered their prizes and lingered in conversation, the shared resonance of breath, sound, and movement remained.
