It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity

Cecilia Vicuña, the Chilean poet and artist, and , a Colombian pianist and composer, arrived at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in the late afternoon and wordlessly took their positions on a makeshift stage. Vicuña began emitting a wordless vocalization, accompanied by Gallo on piano with members of the Stop Shopping Choir supplying background whispers and chants. As the gallery filled up with latecomers, the ululations transformed into growls and bird calls. The music—an uncategorizable mix of new age, folklore, and South American influences—layered in depth as it intermittently mingled or was drowned by the clamor of the street. When the performance came to an end, Vicuña spoke for the first time in a soft, unassuming voice. The wisdom of indigenous heritage has been forgotten amid acts of environmental destruction, she said. “The first one was breath, the second one was mist. Because with the disappearance of mist, moisture leaves the Earth, and everything goes up in flames.… As we lose humidity and moisture, we are also losing our humanity. We breath, we languish in the earth, so that’s how we become human.”