Photo: Annie Forest

Elliot Reed is an internationally exhibited performance artist based in New York. He received his MA in Choreography from Master EXERCE ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France, was a danceWEB ‘19 scholar, member of The Whitney Museum ISP 23-24 cohort, Studio Museum Artist in Residence and part of the museum’s permanent collection. He’s collaborated with artists + musicians including L’rain, Stefani Jemison, Gabriela Ruiz for The Whitney Biennial, and Grisha Coleman among others.

Gallery and museum exhibitions include Kunsthaus Glarus, Performance Space New York, Lucerne Festival with JACK Quartet, Metro Pictures, MoMA PS1, OCD Chinatown, anonymous gallery, The Getty Center, Hammer Museum, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Broad, and performances in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Mexico City, Vienna, and Hamburg.


I also work as a dramaturg + experiential designer

email me?

elliotreedlabs@gmail.com

Projects

Danspace Project 2025

Performed by Nadira Foster-Williams, Reed’s new commission Profanity Only Upsets The Living is a world-premiere solo that celebrates the gift of mourning—the universal yet profoundly isolating experience. Reed writes, “No word will take us there but I’m willing to try.”

 Untitled - October 2024 Los Angeles California

A piece about grief. 5 performers cross-examine each other in a night club. interrupted by loud music, we take turns sharing about love ones we’ve lost under a solitary spot light. The recollections become the music of our dance.

Tech Pack | 2024

Fishman Studio, Granoff Center on the Creative Arts | Level 4S

Brown University December 2024

7:00 PM: Performance by Elliot Reed and featuring performers from the Brown/Trinity MFA Acting program, the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and RISD — de-contextualizing Georges Bataille’s 1947 erotic-poetic narrative The Impossible: A Story of Rats and other writings about longing and thwarted desire by setting them to movement, emotion, and meter.

Performers: Cecilia Azar, Abram Blau, Evie Dumont, Alex Ferrandiz, Erin Lockett, Xaria Madden, Karen Marks, Noah Martinez, Henry Merges, Daniel Shtivelberg, Echo Xu. Research Assistant: James La Bella.

twentyonetwentyfour (2024)

Judson Memorial Church Sept 25 2024

by Elliot Reed

curated by Malcolmx Betts + Arien Wilkerson I'm delivering an hour long epic-poem style lament inspired by my recent history. Deaths in the family, moving between continents twice, sickness, triumphs, mistakes, misdeeds, etc. In my last few performances I've been thinking a lot about "chances." Divination is a convenient tool to displace a sense of personal responsibility to the ether and won't be present in this work. I hope to rid myself of my obsession with "consequences" in this work. Is there a version of the present where "because I want to" is enough? Can we convince ourselves that there is no past and there is no future there is only now. It is fair and logical to make decisions in order to support ones future self, but impossible to move while burdened with the past. The gift of a proper lament is not to subject the other to suffering - but to rip open, dissect, and expose that which immobilizes us. YES it happened, but also WE are happening now. So, now what?

xx,

E

You Can Hear Footsteps (2024)

Elliot Reed at Performance Space New York

Production Credits

Mars Doutey, Sound Designer

Robin Ediger-Seto, Video Designer

Sarai Frazier, Lighting Designer

Žilvinas Jonuśas, Stagehand and Install Crew

Emily LaRochelle, Install Crew

KeAysia Middlebrooks, Stage Manager

Noah Mourra, Install Crew

Elliot Reed, Stage Design

Andy Sowers, Stage Design

Sarazina Stein, Install Crew

Sergey Sutt, Install Crew

Kali VanHorn, Install Crew

Special Thanks -

Kariina Altosaar, Omar Abreu, Noelle Barrera, Emma Callahan, Rafaela Castaldo, Madison Chu, Peter Cramer, Francesca Facciola, Eva Garcia, Max Gottlieb, Myka Greene, Zlata Grek, Ashley Grier, Harmony Honig, Brittany Ko, Tina Luchetta, Zoe Map, Sarah McNelis, Grace O'Mara, Kate Peters, Hunter Petree, Choice Plasencia, Aliyah Rain, Parker rb, Ada Reso, Mosie Romney, Nicole Fuentes Silver, Heidi Valkenburg, Coco Villa, Benjamin Volk, Amanda Wallace, and Angel Z.

Additional thank you to: Nic Kay, Amanda Horowitz, Jerron Herman, Karen Lofgren, Zach Nicol, Tasneem Kamal Sarkez, K.O. Nnamdie, Joseph Ian Henrikson, keyon gaskin

Union - Solo show Nov. 02, 2023 - Dec. 30, 2023

https://www.documentjournal.com/2023/12/elliot-reed-union-anonymous-gallery-art/

Performance is not just something you “do.” For any body that exists in a public, performance can happen TO you as well. The gaze, desires, and interpolations of the other become tangible material. The eyes are the window to the soul. I’m boarding up the house.*

*Mining my conceptual difficulties with live performance as tools for making more work, I’m interested in how the body of the performer becomes a consumable object on stage. A type of aesthetic cannibalism if you will. Unfortunately, violence against Blacks, queers, and other minorities has progressed beyond the world of simple physical or socially motivated violence into something much more sinister. News articles, blog posts, and videos can forever attach the victims of violent crimes to the motives of the attacker. The body of the victim has been acted upon, absorbing a hypertext composed by public opinion. Is there anyway to avoid this? How do we cultivate and maintain our anonymity?

In my studio, I’m triangulating a visual link between post-minimalist art and writing, process composition, and a lived queer and Black performance tradition. What if the work of artists such as George Lewis, Susan Howe, Anthony Braxton, Félix González-Torres, and Yvonne Rainer could be viewed as pre-emptive resistance to digital censorship? Predictive digital technologies profit by assuming the behavior of users and anticipating their next choices. By working within self-imposed confines of form and process, I feel we can envision a resistance to over-simplified corporate storytelling. Specifically, Yvonne’s work surrounding gesture and “liveness” is a north star to me as I feel she managed to negate the performance of virtuosity and literal personhood, focusing on pedestrian movements eschewing identifiable narrative. Is this a successful protest of the dancer performed from within the stage? In what other ways can the artist talk about their craft while also remaining critical of it? I will never not be a part of my body but its my job to question how it exists within the world, and not just receive the labels attached to it. This is not randomness, this is an embodied refusal.

I’m inspired by Georges Bataille’s writing on Gilles de Rais, The Delectable Negro by Vincent Woodard, intellectual property law, and produced an entire exhibition about the arrest, crimes, and trial of Ed Buck. All of these things feel intimately connected to my understanding of performance as a methodology - performance as a tool used by the individual to interface with a public.

I moved to New York City in 2019 and stayed between Brooklyn and Manhattan during the early days of COVID-19 and the movement for Black lives. One of my favorite image memories was riding my bike through the empty city, seeing the luxury stores with boarded-up windows. It was as if the brands themselves were ashamed at the state of society. The performance of wealth and commerce had been disrupted and the shops erected modesty skirts.

This is disappearing in plain sight. A concert of suggestions reaching towards freedom. Walls divide but they can also contain or protect. “Home”

  • Elliot Reed, October 2023


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Elliot Reed is an artist, based in New York working across video, dance, performance, and sculpture.

He received his MA in Choreography from Master EXERCE ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France, and is a member of The Whitney Museum ISP 23-24 cohort.

Elliot is a 2019 danceWEB scholar, 2019–20 Artist in Residence at the prestigious Studio Museum in Harlem and part of the museum’s permanent collection. Reed was also the recipient of the 2019 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant. Recent gallery and museum exhibitions include Kunsthaus Glarus (2021) JACK Quartet (2021), Metro Pictures (2021), MoMA PS1 (2020/21), OCD Chinatown (2021), The Getty Center (2018), Hammer Museum (2016), Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (2018), The Broad (2017), and performances in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Mexico City, Vienna, and Hamburg.

Union marks Reed’s third presentation with anonymous gallery, however our first solo exhibition at the gallery together. Union, opens November 2nd from 6-8 pm and will run through December 30th. For further information, contact hello@anonymousgallery.com



PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:  

Elliot Reed .

Pig’s Milk #2 (For Montpellier)

Pig’s Milk #2 is a dance about making and loss. A 40 minute machine that writes, re-writes, and unwrites itself on stage. The choreography arrives prefabricated - a collection of small motions transmitted by Elliot Reed to the four other dancers joining on stage. Prior to the performance, the dancers learn all the parts but can only perform a maximum of 6 each night. The audience sees a work writing itself onstage and performed in one variation. But the entire dance holds the present performance, and any potential version within.

After the audience is seated, the performance cards are shuffled and “dealt” to each dancer. The choreographies are then transcribed onto post-it notes, pasted in rows at the front of the stage, then performed top-to-bottom. At the end of each row, a dancer is allowed to take a short break on or off stage. Afterwards, the dancer performs the next row to their right, interpreting the other’s notes, performing any misspellings, drawings, references, or translations. 

Pig’s Milk references the profane edges of what is natural. All mammals produce milk to feed their young. Humans have domesticated certain animals to produce milk products for consumption, but milk from pigs is commonly seen as taboo. In Occidental culture, the pig signifies gluttony, sloth, filth, and sloppiness. Whereas dogs, cows, and horses are at least acknowledged as having feelings. Pigs Milk #2 embraces its perpetual brokenness, forever existing as a version of itself. "

  Choreography, Stage Design, and Direction - Elliot Reed
Dancers
Rob Bridger, Salah Chikh, Rubén Proline, marion storm, Elliot Reed

May 25th 2023. ICI-CCN Montpellier, France

Poulet Au Lait: Le Messie des Sangliers (2022 40 min. choreo/design/performance Elliot Reed)

Performed at Institut Chorégraphique International – Centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier (ICI-CCN)

“There are two types of animal - the domestic and the wild. The product and the incidental. The rehearsed and the rehearsal. Cooking in liquid keeps meat tender and soft. A slow braise allowed the flesh to absorb a rich flavor. Excess broth can be reserved for rice, pilaf, or other dishes. “

 Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus, Switzerland
Elliot Reed
Rhythm
September 5–November 28, 2021

“I picked Rhythm for the show title because it speaks to my sense of fate. In the Oxford dictionary rhythm is
1) A strong regular repeated pattern of sounds and movements or

2) a regular pattern of changes and events.

Both the upstairs and downstairs galleries exist in a type of suspended animation. Upstairs, the two videos and a performative installation present the viewer with a ghost. At room-scale my body becomes an apparition, project- ed on the white screen, showing the residue of my labor. The large work is a metaphor - a piercing, a prepara- tion, and an encounter with an unsolvable problem. Being able to see the large scale of a barrier and performing the work of engaging with it. The jump rope video is a private toil. Sweat and meditation, straining the heart to strengthen it, increasing the capacity to feel and improv- ing stamina. The work with my face is an acknowledge- ment. Reminding myself of what’s there by touch, while also stretching/reconfiguring/pulling the flesh.

The basement gallery starts with a sonic “wash” with bright green walls and light, pointing towards streetlights, plants, and restoration. The left-right pan of the audio is inviting. This is followed by the second room, motorcycles all parked in a diagonal line. In progressive tones of red and orange, playing back the sound of inhaling breath.

A reminder of the intake required before expending more energy.”

-Elliot Reed

The exhibition by Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo) is now followed by two solo exhibitions by Bri Williams and Elliot Reed. Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo) was given carte blanche from the institution in inviting both artists. The works of Bri Williams and Elliot Reed are being pre- sented in Switzerland for the first time.

Elliot Reed (*1992, lives and works in New York) is a dancer, performer, and filmmaker. His works examine
the relationship between physicality, time, and systems
in conflict. Reed: “Time is my material and my embodied self is the medium.” The artist draws on techniques of improvisation and non-linear, symbolic narrative structures to create new perceptions of reality. His videos, installa- tions, and performances lead to intense, at times unnerv- ing propositions for unleashing alternative potentials that challenge and question the proportionalities of normative micro-networks in social systems. Collective unease is often used as a motivating factor in alluding to the possibility of breaking free of these systems.

https://kunsthausglarus.ch/en/exhibitions/archive/elliot-reed-rhythm

https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/elliot-reed-rhythm-at-kunsthaus-glarus/

https://www.contemporaryartlibrary.org/project/elliot-reed-at-kunsthaus-glarus-glarus-20440/8

 

Succulent Rust

August 12th 2021 7-8pm, The Ramble, Central Park NYC, Performed by JACK Quartet (all photos Julia Bumke)

I created a performance-based score, where musicians play based on what they hear, see, smell, or feel in the environment. The list of “triggers” is the same for each performer but because their locations are different, no two responses are identical. I chose The Central Park Ramble because of its fame as a birdwatching and gay cruising hotspot. Over the hour duration for the work, the public “cruises” using their ears and other visitors, to find each musician hidden in a different part of The Ramble. Its impossible to completely view two players at once, meaning each experience of the composition is unique.

The musicians were staged with stands, sequined backdrops, and a single pink spotlight adding a second layer of suspended reality to the performance.

- very special thanks to Chris, Austin, Jay and John.

 Untitled*

Elliot Reed w/ Isabel Legate

Performance inside Dozie Kanu’s Installation Blood Type

Performance Space New York, October 19 2021

*Elliot Reed narrates a live score to performer Isabel Legate, through private headset and 3 live-streaming camera angles. The performance was open to limited audiences in Manhattan and simulcast online.

Photo credit Christopher Garcia Valle ©

Photo credit Christopher Garcia Valle ©

Photo credit Christopher Garcia Valle ©

Photo credit Christopher Garcia Valle ©

Photo credit Christopher Garcia Valle ©

THREE WORKS
ELLIOT REED
open to the public
one viewer at a time

OCD Chinatown, NYC
March 25 — May 10 2021
Saturdays and Sundays between 12
and 6 pm or by appointment

Interview: https://www.x-traonline.org/online/pyx-and-other-words

Like every living thing, Elliot Reed struggles between present and past.

But instead of kneading and glossing this conflict into seeming clarity, Reed makes a virtue of vagueness. His work seeks to have 50-ply blanket of layers, like archaeological artifacts whose discoveries elicit more questions than they answer.

The 29-year-old Reed might be better known for his performance works, but the only performance here is imaginary – via “Drawing,” the centerpiece of the show, which lived one life as a dance floor before retiring into wall piece objecthood.

Even the title of the show, Three Works, is a piece of misinformation. Actually, there are five.

Because Reed’s works chafe at definition even as they court it, no attempt will be made to decrypt them here. Instead, there are two helpful lists of layers which the works variously inhabit and the tensions they explore.

1. Drawing (2019-2021) approximately 4ft x 9ft - wood, latex paint, indigo, sweat, rubber, blood, saliva, dirt, velcro

2. Sheath (2021) - hand-studded leather jacket, 24k gold hex spikes, brass studs, display stand

3. Concrete (2020-21) - flowers, metal shelf, paper, cellophane, ink

4. Untitled (Legs) (2021) - framed set of two matte photo prints

5. Untitled (Umbrellas) (2021) - framed set of two matte photo prints


The works have 24 layers, as:

• plinth
• calendar
• body
• envy
• dance
• tea leaves
• sex
• trash
• revision
• cryptography
• minimalism
• collection
• memory
• homage
• history
• set
• exclusion
• shibboleth
• evidence
• chic
• perversity
• monument
• pyx
• legend

The works have 32 tensions, between:

• suggested and stated
• tangible and untouchable
• inclusion and exclusion
• ab-ex and minimalism
• joy and sadness
• theatrical and permanent
• visible and invisible
• past/plasticity, present/plasterity, future/posterity
• smudged and pristine
• loss and leftover
• peace and violence
• flux and stasis
• race and erasion
• packaging and prize
• communal and contemplative
• public and personal
• fabrication rate and approval rate
• lazy/passive and industrious/active
• artifact and human
• sculpture and painting
• utilized floor and fetishized wall
• purpose and accident
• valueless and value-added
• artwork and film screen
• flotsam and jetsam
• digital and manual
• horizontal and vertical
• simple and multiple
• show and shambles
• literal and abstract
• myth and truth
• life and death

 This Longing Vessel -
In the second year of a multi-part collaboration, The Studio Museum in Harlem will present its annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition at MoMA PS1. This Longing Vessel will feature new work by the 2019–20 cohort of the Studio Museum’s foundational residency program, artists E. Jane (b. 1990, Bethesda, MD), Naudline Pierre (b. 1989, Leominster, MA), and Elliot Reed (b. 1992, Milwaukee, WI). With practices spanning new media, performance, and painting, this collaborative exhibition enacts a radical intimacy—a vessel to hold and be held by. In longing, the works shown here find the intersection between queerness and blackness as a waypoint: one to yearn from, to reach toward, to leap beyond. This Longing Vessel troubles and excites ways of seeing, seeking new language for the building of extraordinary futures.

All artworks by Elliot Reed:

1. Supernumerary 2020 Wall installation with multi-channel video (color, sound), Performed with JACK Quartet. 24:06 min

2. Hole 2020 Performance, A single hole broken into the wall

3. Placeholder Series #1 (Nudity) 2020 3M reflective aluminum sign

4. End To End Encrypted (Lot’s Wife) 2020 163.2 lbs of salt, one love song performed via private video call, and artist’s clothing

5. Placeholder Series #2 (Blood) 2020 3M reflective aluminum sign

6. Hue 2020 Digital color scan of artist’s right hand as custom paint color. Courtesy the artist

7. In An Attempt To… 2020 Text mo.ma/elliotreed

All works courtesy the artist. Photo - Kris Graves

 Duets - Duets is a series of four improvised performances by Elliot Reed at MoMA PS1. Reinterpreting COVID-19 precautions as a formal challenge, Reed and his guests occupy an audience-less physical space at a distance from one another, navigating institutional public health guidelines. The performances are filmed in a private location within MoMA PS1 inaccessible to the public, and streamed live to a monitor onsite at PS1 and also to this webpage. In tandem, live footage of the monitor, as well as the visitors watching it, will be broadcast to PS1’s instagram. This tangle of multiplied feeds reflects the doubling of bodies in digital space, a conceptual extension of Reed’s work in This Longing Vessel.

Duets is presented in conjunction with This Longing Vessel: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2019–20, The Studio Museum in Harlem’s annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition, held at MoMA PS1 while the Studio Museum constructs a new building on the site of its longtime home on West 125th Street. mo.ma/duets

1) Elliot Reed and Raymond Pinto

2) Elliot Reed and Ishmael Houston Hones

3) Elliot Reed and Ron Athey

4) Elliot Reed and Samantha CC

 Gallery View (Dust Is The Spice of Life) - As part of a commission with JACK Studio, I developed a performance for high school students at Kaufman Music Center’s “Face The Music” Program. This video is a mix of taped rehearsal starting in January 2021, and home recordings after lockdown, ending in April 2021. I mixed the students audio into a final composition, inanition to video of my performative score.

 Internal Recreation - by Elliot Reed *Cinematography + Performance - Diamond Stingily, Jade Kuriki Olivo (Puppies Puppies) *Music, Editing + Performance - Elliot Reed

 Quarantine Ballet - Performed by Elliot Reed, Zach Nicol, Joelle Mercedes. Music & Edit by Elliot Reed

 Twosies - a video

 Ant -

“January 11th + 12th 2019 12pm – 12am

Ant was a performance by Elliot Reed. 45 performers create a film in private. The resulting multi-cam footage was projected in the same room, January 11th + 12th 2019 12pm – 12am

Ant is inspired by the mathematics concept Langton’s Ant. Langton’s Ant proves that a set of repeated, simple instructions reveals a complex pattern after many repetitions. This is an abstract machine. Actors navigate each other with written prompts, each individual reacting to a secret motivation. All directing, rehearsal, and subsequent actions are filmed in real time. Any props or detritus from the shoot will be left exactly as is, leaving a physical memory of private action. Potential is a word that comes to mind. Knowing, believing, and understanding that something powerful is present, but somehow just out of reach. The viewer will recognize their body in relationship to the venue, and in somatic response to the performers on screen.”

Human Resources, Los Angeles

 CURB ALERT! -

“Performance artist Elliot Reed will write an original script using sampled text from the “Free Stuff” section of Craigslist–a section of the site that many artists know as a treasure trove of unwanted items ranging from spare bricks, dirt, and wood, to furniture, VHS Tapes, and discarded cardboard. Performers will also be hired via a Craigslist posting, inviting a makeshift cast to one rehearsal before their debut at the fest. 

This performance thus creates a conversation around notions of value, reflecting on the many creative ways we collect, recycle, and reassemble different elements in our lives. Who we are is formed by what we have access to. As we grow into ourselves, we take greater control and exercise choice. With humor, Reed investigates this process of never-ending discovery by putting themself on the spot.”

OUTsider Fest (Austin, Texas 2019)

America’s Procession -

“What membrane is this? Who did they lead? I’m waiting. Slipping into the second tense. A specter. You’ve been given permission. A decades long glance. I planned my memory in your fingertips. All sugar and extra salt. Fruits preserved for a later date. Let me feed you.” - Excerpt from America’s Procession

America’s Procession is the directorial debut of artist Elliot Reed, with an original score by Antonio Harper. The piece will lead the audience through an experimental aria that invokes the artist’s great-grandmother America Bell Miller, a prolific poet, musician, caretaker and mother, who died suddenly of a heart attack while singing in church. Through voice, movement, and a series of games, dancers and actors will move through the space and audience, gliding to their final resting place, or perhaps carving a passageway through the genealogy of a transformative, almost supernatural event.

Performers:
Asphodèle, Dove Ayinde (Hausa), Sarah Gail, Jordi, Thandiwe kaRA, Richard Muller, and Robbie Ann Darby

Post-performance reception with DJ BAE BAE

October 12th 2018 at NAVEL downtown Los Angeles


 Faust -

With Ms. Vaginal Davis

 Lesson -

Berlin, 2018

 Line Drawing (For Malmö) -

Malmö, Sweden summer 2018

 Two Business Women Trek To An Undisclosed Location - Union Station downtown Los Angeles

“Two business women traverse a busy train station in near suspended animation.”

Elliot Reed 2018

Performed by Atika Greene & Asphodèle

 500 Questions - 5th July 2018 at The Getty Museum. Los Angeles, CA

with Sterling Hedges, Cole Jupiter James, & Ildar Kurt

Video by Jahnny

 Untitled (Time Management) - One hour improvised solo. PØST, Los Angeles

“Jan 11, 8 PM - 10 PM 2018

Please join us this Thursday, Jan 11 at 8pm, for performances by artists Ann Hirsch and Elliot Reed, as part of the ‘Twin Engines-Performance Series’ curated by Nathan Bockelman”

 Comedy - A performance (excerpt)

Nah Oblivion is a music video.
Performance and music by Elliot Reed. Camera and edit - Beck + Col

 OFFBLACK OBSIDIAN VISIONS - is a 2017 experimental techno album

If white is something so easily defined, then why isn't offblack a color?

OFFBLACK OBSIDIAN VISIONS
Sounds/Concept/Performance by Elliot Reed
Arranged by Elliot Reed, Sterling Hedges, and Tim Reyes
Focus Map recorded in collaboration with Pauline Gloss
Mix + Master by Ali Jaafar
Photography by Phuc Le
Cover design by Elliot Reed

"Forever is a long time"
Los Angeles - 2017 listen here

Severance Package is a 40 minute performance from 2017. 4 glass bottles filled with ammonia and confetti line the room. I sing atop EJ Hill’s sculpture “A Monumental Offering Of Potential Energy" installed at Human Resources Los Angeles. [song/dance/blood/smoke/fumes/noise/flash/bang/snip]. -excerpt -

A___ Inutility was a performance from 2016.

(only once and never again)

DADDY - is a performance music game by Elliot Reed & Archie Prakash (Sonic Dreams, Hello Team Solar). Play the piano-controller as trendy buzzwords fall from the sky to a soundtrack of house music and berating insults from “DADDY.” DADDY debuted for IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games, 2016 at University of Southern California.

 

DADDYISMS

Digital video with sound

00:04:47 TRT

©2015 Elliot Reed

Key

Digital video with sound

00:02:46 TRT

©2014 Elliot Reed

https://elliotreedlabs.bandcamp.com/album/heartworm

The first music I ever recorded - Heartworm was made at my parents house during winter break my first year of college. I would drink way too much coffee, bring my laptop to the piano, and have so much fun.

Everything on this album (piano, drums, FX) was recorded with my 2009 MacBook microphone (RIP). Later this same year I spilled coffee on the keyboard while watching The Cosby Show in bed and lost everything. Glad I had a CD copy of this lying around thanks to Ben Hess, my unofficial archivist.

Many thanks to Tom Zarzecki for playing guitar. He sent me hour long improvisations on guitar from Chicago, which I chopped up on "Gates" and "Fire Hydrant."

This album represents me using my voice for the first time ever, singing my own words and playing with different characters and personalities. As a performing artist now, voice is still my most versatile instrument.

10 years later I can't say how influential this was in motivating me to make art. Heartworm is one of the first creative projects I finished. Grateful to share this memory and music with anyone who cares tolisten.

Love to you wherever you are...

Elliot Reed
Hamburg, Germany
August 16 2019

released January 1, 2010.