The Knockdown Serenade

2026

Audio animatronics, styrofoam, plastic, acrylic, wood, enamel, sound

Sound production: Diego Cuellar Sarmiento

The Knockdown Serenade is a multimedia installation in which the after-hours city performs itself. Drawing on Phoenix’s visual language of karaoke bars, gas stations, alleyways, and commercial signage, the installation transforms familiar urban artifacts into anthropomorphic characters on a theatrical stage. Public sculptures dance, slushie cups sing, pigeons act out scenes of celebration and excess, and a transformer with LED eyes keeps watch over the gallery.

A thirteen-minute sound composition replaces karaoke lyrics with fragments of slogans, warnings, and street signage, blurring the boundaries among architecture, consumer culture, and performance.

The project investigates how contemporary identities are increasingly constructed through repetition, imitation, and scripted social behaviors. It proposes the karaoke bar as a metaphor for a broader social condition in which authenticity and performance become indistinguishable

Previously shown in Northlight Gallery, Phoenix, AZ