Some events burn through a place. Others continue burning quietly inside the people who lived through them. Multimedia artist Merlin Coleman has made a work that listens to both. Her new work, DISPATCHES from the CHARCOAL FOREST, opens May 1 in the East Bay.
Part choral performance, part sound installation, part reckoning, the piece draws from interviews with cleanup workers, survivors, dispatch audio and others touched by the Tubbs Fire, which raged through Santa Rosa in 2017. Presented in the round, with singers moving through the audience, it surrounds listeners in voices, fragments, rhythms and raw emotion.
Coleman, who lives in Sonoma County and grew up here, said the project began simply enough—with a need to face what happened…