Covert/Overt by Methods Body for Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial 2024

John Niekrasz - drums, percussion, voice
Luke Wyland - keys, electronics, voice

Covert/Overt is a new sound art composition by Portland duo Methods Body—Luke Wyland (keys, voice, & electronics) and John Niekrasz (percussion & voice) commissioned by Oregon Contemporary for the 2024 Artists’ Biennial. This piece celebrates speech diversity through the lens of people who stutter. Methods Body interviewed people from Portland and abroad, drawing musical inspiration from the rhythmic fingerprints and cadences of different individuals’ disfluencies. Covert/Overt employs technological refraction and acoustic syllabic mirroring to share and expand upon some aspects of what it’s like communicating with different forms of verbal disfluency.

Wyland is a covert stutterer and has spent much of his life hiding the overt features of his stutter by changing out words (known as substitution), navigating around difficult words or phrases (called circumlocution), or simply avoiding situations where he might be expected to speak. Wyland grew up with the belief that his stutter could be cured in an era when fluency was the goal above all else. Communication differences often carry with them a lived experience of internalized shame, driven by the societal stigma around disfluent speech.
One of the central motivations for this project is to subvert this masking and shame by celebrating overt stuttering as a unique way of expressing oneself.

Stuttering is a neurological communication disability affecting approximately 1% of the population. There is no cure for stuttering and those who stutter beyond the age of 10 will likely stutter for the rest of their lives.

Special thanks to the National Stuttering Association's Portland, OR, chapter @westutter, SPACE @spacetostutter, and the participants in this project: Jia Bin, D’Amari Brown, Lydia Brubaker, Bryan Castro, Dilpreet Dhinjan, Josh Dunford, Tyler Eschendal, Zayne Edwin, Conor Foran, Stephen Greene @the_stutterverse, Jack Henderson, Matthew Hobbs, Ezra Horak @stutterology, Sandhya Kilambi, Bethany Laratta, Alex Lee, Avital Masri, Liiiam McLaughlin, Aaron M, Ronan Miller @celebrating_stuttering_voices, Colin Moore, Bevin Murphy, Jonah Otis, Grace Pelsik-Brown, Hector Perez, Moudi Sbeity, Aidan Sank, Cambell Shaw, Chris Schuyler, Olivia Simmons, Bennie Storey, Mandy Rodstrom, Priya @stutterconversation, Brendan Robinson, and Jeremy Uy.

For more information on stuttering and resources for those seeking community and support, please visit:
https://www.spacetostutter.org
https://westutter.org

https://methodsbody.bandcamp.com
https://www.oregoncontemporary.org
A camera and edit by Seth Nehil. https://www.paradisemeow.com
©2024