BIO & CLIENTS
Bio
Kayleigh is a multidisciplinary performance artist, ethnographic researcher, producer, and oral historian. Over the past ten years she has orchestrated spaces for people to share recorded audios of poignant histories and stories oriented around critical social and political narratives to be presented in an Oral History Performance Initiative: The Community Storytelling Composition Project.
Most of her work focuses on socio-political discourse, drawing upon performance as a subversive tool to generate conversation around a particular poignant or charged subject matter- endlessly questioning how to utilize aberrant, site-specific spaces for the narratives to be heard outside of conventional archival and proscenium environments. Kayleigh’s intellectual interests investigate concepts of performativity, the construction of boundaries invoked in spectatorship, the utilization of various mediums of art as instruments of dissent, art as an instrument for delivering both fiction and nonfiction narratives, and performance's role in (re)shaping societal dialogue, belonging, political constructs, cultural bias, consensus culture and utopian future making.
As an oral historian Kayleigh creates soundscape installations, digital archives, exhibitions, listening parties, and live multi-modal performance pieces that include communal and personal narratives.
Most of Kayleigh's work focuses on how to share stories to convey the "felt experience" of those living the story—in effort to transcend division and difference, as well as splash in moments of transcendence. She hopes the recording and sharing of personal stories, or by adding the additional verbiage to make's one's story transport a reader through time and space, can cultivate fertile ground for "hearing" the experiences of another, as well as perhaps welcome a little playfulness—a much needed antidote to life's seriousness.
Through her performance company The CSCP Kayleigh used audio narratives as soundtracks to explore the stage for ethnographic storytelling to discuss societal issues, instigating felt experience around concepts including; Disconnection, Involuntary Waste, Local Food Systems, Hydraulic Fracking, Gender politics and Systemic injustices.
Kayleigh holds a Masters degree in Oral History from Columbia University, a Bachelors degree in Sociology from Hunter College, and a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Anthropology from SUNY New Paltz, as well as a Masters in Traditional Chinese Medicine at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and is a NYS, NCCAOM Licensed Acupuncturist.
Clients
Kayleigh was a fellow of the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research & Mellon Arts Project "Black Curators Matters" where she had the opportunity to record and audit-edit the transcript of renowned New York City Curators Deborah Willis & Kellie E. Jones, supported by Curators Kalia Brookes, Tumelo Mosoka, and Performance researcher Thomas Lax. Presented at The MoMa in October 2023: https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/9025
Kayleigh was the oral historian for the Tucson Meet Yourself: Artist Histories & Long-term Festival Impact initiative, a project supported and funded through the collaboration of The University of Arizona and The Southwest Folk Alliance—an oral history project to understand the impact the 48-year-old Folklife Festival had on select participating artist's life and work. Through the interviewing of 15 Tucson-based artists over the course of 2021-2022, the project provided an opportunity to hear from a diverse group of artisans, home cooks, dancers, musicians and activists within the community—celebrating and honoring the beauty of Tucson. Listen to full interviews here: https://tucsonmeetyourself.org/tucson-hear-yourself/
She served as the resident oral historian with New York-based arts nonprofit Artis, a nonprofit that supports contemporary artists from Israel whose work addresses aesthetic, social, and political questions that inspire reflection and debate. The oral history project invited listeners to more deeply understand art practice through the connections revealed in the interviews, between the lived experience of artists and their work.
Kayleigh has also been an audit-editor of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project, a project that has recorder over 400 interviews of those who worked with Obama during his presidency, creating a record of all of the voices who had an impact on the decisions and actions made throughout his presidential administration.
Additional Work:
Roll The Bones Theatre Company- General Manager & Production
New York Times Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/theater/nightlife-theater-new-york.html
Seattle Public Theater- Production Manager
New York Public Library-Library of Performance Arts - Dance Oral History Assistant
LEIMAY Contemporary Performance Company- Arts Administrations & Programs Manager
Destination Boudoir - Freelance Writer
The GC Advocate - Freelance Writer
The Smithsonian - Anthropology Assistent Researcher
Huguenot Historical Society- Assistant Researcher
Ruckbau Consulting Firm- Culture Writer
Zen Peacemakers- Network Director