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Christa Donner

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drawing of a storm system from above

Fever Dreams at WAM

October 29, 2025

In Spring 2026 I’ll debut a new body of work developed in collaboration with my partner-in-all-things, Andrew Yang. Our exhibition "Fever Dreams of a Cool-Breathed Earth” for the Worcester Museum of Art (WAM) is a multi sensory reflection on climate-driven extreme heat, exploring the deeply material and figurative relationship of our bodies to the changing planetary body as complex systems in transformation. For the past year and a half we’ve been drawing, sculpting, recording endangered sounds, and hosting conversations with scientists, teens, gardeners, and other community members in the Worcester, MA region.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at our process through the forthcoming book “Facing the Elements” (published by Hirmer and distributed by University of Chicago Press), which pairs our work with a parallel exhibition of historical prints at WAM engaging themes of weather and climate. The book features essays, studio images, interviews, and layered interventions.

Tags SoundArt, Drawing, Massachusetts, Climate

Artist Research at MacLeish Field Station

February 7, 2025

Since August 2024 much of my studio research has been based at Smith College’s Ada and Archibald Macleish Field Station, a 250-acre area of forest and pasture land where I’m currently working as a Visiting Artist. Every week I visit two sites there to record the changes in soundscape as part of an informal acoustic ecology study. As a way of getting to know both the human and non-human activity at Macleish, I have also been scheduling walks with researchers, staff, students, and neighbors who know the area well, and they are introducing me to the sounds and species they know and notice. There is so much more going on here than meets the eye. In 2025-26 I’ll be doing workshops in nature journaling and field recording, and you’ll get glimpses of new work in a variety of media inviting human visitors to listen, sniff the air, and sink our fingers into deep moss and snowdrift.

Tags SoundArt, Massachusetts, FieldRecording

Magic Hour in Singapore

February 7, 2025

Lets take a walk together: Back in 2020, Andrew Yang and I were the inaugural Artists-in-Residence at Yale-NUS College in Singapore when COVID hit. Museums and studio spaces were closed indefinitely, and like many we found refuge in daily walks. It was not what anyone had planned for - but offered a rare opportunity to experience the city free of tree trimmers and cars, instead repopulated with the persistence of non-human life. We mixed recordings of that traffic-free tropical soundscape with narration to create five multisensory audio outings reflecting on interspecies interconnectedness, climate breakdown, and presence.

These sonic meditations were just re-released as QR-coded postcards for the exhibition "Magic Hour" and the book "Magic: Art Practices at Yale-NUS College." It's a bittersweet treat, commemorating the vibrant creative community of a great institution that will sadly close at the end of this semester.

Revisiting them now from the snowy fields of Massachussets is a surreal portal to another time and place. Transform your own wintry walk at https://soundcloud.com/.../listening-through-the-landscape

Tags SoundArt, Singapore

Studies for Simultaneous Listening at Roman Susan, Chicago

July 26, 2021

If you’re in Chicago, join me at dusk on July 27th for Studies for Simultaneous Listening at Roman Susan Gallery, 1224 W Loyola Ave in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.

Outdoor Projections
Tuesday, July 27 // 8:30-10 PM
Studies for Simultaneous Listening blends the existing soundscape of Roman Susan’s neighborhood with projected video and field recordings imagining the area's ecological past, present, and possible future. These recordings will be part of an audio walking tour guided by non-human inhabitants, currently under development for the nearby West Ridge Nature Park as part of the upcoming Navigations series. Field recordings and projections are activated around dusk tonight and tomorrow, to be experienced directly in the outdoors.

Tags SoundArt, FieldRecording, Projections, RomanSusan, WestRidgeNaturePreserve, video

Latest Posts

Featured
Oct 29, 2025
Fever Dreams at WAM
Oct 29, 2025
Oct 29, 2025
Feb 7, 2025
Artist Research at MacLeish Field Station
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025
Magic Hour in Singapore
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025
Mar 22, 2024
Utopian Care in Brooklyn
Mar 22, 2024
Mar 22, 2024
Feb 25, 2024
Exhibitions and an Artist Talk in Western Mass
Feb 25, 2024
Feb 25, 2024
Sep 20, 2023
Self-Adjacent in Virginia, NYC, and Ohio
Sep 20, 2023
Sep 20, 2023
Jun 30, 2022
A Portal is Opening at the Lawrence Arts Center, Kansas
Jun 30, 2022
Jun 30, 2022
Oct 4, 2021
Dear Human at the West Ridge Nature Preserve, Chicago
Oct 4, 2021
Oct 4, 2021
Oct 4, 2021
Nature Now at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City
Oct 4, 2021
Oct 4, 2021
Oct 4, 2021
Making Kin At the Center for Humans & Nature
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Oct 4, 2021