Ecca Echo

Virtual Breakout During the Outbreak June 6th Livestream

O as in Ozone
On the first weeks of quarantine, the sky opened in Los Angeles and it rained. We stayed indoors, while it poured, and waited for the city to open back up. During this collective time inside, we’ve given the earth and the ozone holes time and space to heal. Scientists are currently cooperating on a global scale to find a vaccine, and I wonder if that same focused and urgent collaboration can be funneled towards solving issues of human-caused climate change. This pandemic has presented a massive opening, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reevaluate our wasteful ways and reinvent ourselves. Globally, we’ve hit rewind on our emissions levels to that of the 2000s! Personally, a 2003 Hillary Duff song from the album Metamorphosis has been stuck in my head for months. It’s testing my sanity and I have a few questions: Are we in the midst of a metamorphosis? Or are we caught in a loop? Can we close the loop? Are we really ready to “open for business”? And, can we stay open-minded and open-hearted? The sonic components of O as in Ozone are comprised of original vocals, original lyrics, and found sounds collected and stripped from Youtube videos.
 
Reb L Limerick (aka Ecca Echo)
2020

Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2020:
Ecca Echo Live!

I will inhabit my persona of Ecca Echo, an ecosexual pop singer in a complicated relationship with technology and ecology. Ecca Echo will use her voice, a live looping device and captivating video projections to create a poignant entertainment experience that slowly cracks under the pressure of climate change and technomadness. The audience experiences the moments before, after, and in between pop songs, wherein Ecca Echo is warming up or melting down, in accordance with the warming planet. Darkly humorous and repetitive spoken word interludes laden with puns and wordplay reveal Ecca Echo’s fears and obsessions. “Florida is sinking, I’m trying to sync up. I water my plants from the sink. I let my plants die but I won’t let my phone die. I can’t instagram handle being alone. I’m clutching my touchscreen in case of emergency. Unseasonably warm, feeling the urgency. Typing a list for the long emergency.” The audience will find themselves grooving, groaning, and grappling as they ride the sonic, visual, emotional rollercoaster of Ecca Echo’s spiraling contradictions. In past iterations the performance has ended in a myriad of ways: with planned failure of all Ecca’s technology until only a powerful a cappella tone remains, a participatory group sighing mediation, and 30 phones simultaneously playing 3 haunting vocal harmonies out of phase. Elements of the performance are flexible, and can be adapted to specific audiences and spaces, and can last between 15 and 30 minutes.