Iddo Aharony

“Occupying the Banks,” an essay by Steven Boone, reflects upon his experiences sleeping in bank ATM lobbies in downtown Chicago during the winter months. Boone had been experiencing homelessness for several years. His essay questions the different roles these lobbies embody, as well as the invisibility of those who sometimes need to take shelter within them. “Occupation,” this audiovisual work, emerged from Boone’s essay. It is a collaboration between Boone (who also performs in the video), Kevin B. Lee (video), Matthew Gold (double bass/improvisation) and Iddo Aharony (composition/electronics). Along the creative process, Boone and Lee returned to these same bank lobbies, this time to film, using nothing more than a smart phone camera to explore these spaces’ unfamiliar familiarities. Field-recorded audio from the lobbies became the sole source material for the sonic aspect of the work, in dialogue with Gold’s closely recorded double bass playing.