What is Site/Sound?

This October, look forward to a unique collaborative project in partnership with Friends of the Rail Park and American Composers Forum (ACF), Philadelphia Chapter. Site/Sound: Revealing the Rail Park will take place over three weeks, weaving together sight and sound along the tracks, thoroughfares, and tunnels of the Reading Railroad in Philadelphia. Celebrate the past, present, and future of this historic rail corridor with public events and installations, breaking new ground in the interconnection of sound and visual art in public art projects.

Through soundscapes, music, and spoken word programs, large-scale projections, new murals, exhibitions, pop-up experiences, films, live performances, special tours, and family programming, Site/Sound will activate both the current quarter-mile of elevated green space and invite the public to envision the path of the future park and experience its unusual vantage both above and below the cityscape. Together with the communities touching the Rail Park, we’ll imagine the vast possibilities for this public space, exploring how the future is influenced by both the past and the present.

Gene Coleman, Executive Director of ACF Philadelphia, is curating three large-scale art installations that will anchor the festival, created by three teams of noted Philadelphia-based artists: Carolyn Healy and John JH Phillips; Erik Ruin and Rosie Langabeer; and Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib, and Eugene Lew. The installations will be activated on three Saturdays—October 5, 12, and 19—at various locations along the future path of the Park with live performances each Saturday night from innovative performers and musicians of national and international renown (Sunday rain dates).