Suzanne Bocanegra and The Crossing: How to Survive
Suzanne Bocanegra and The Crossing’s *How to Survive* is a multimedia installation about living through a period of increasingly severe and familiar environmental disasters. The work places the four-time Grammy Award-winning chamber choir The Crossing at the center of an immersive experience combining choral music, film, sound, costume, and moving images.
Conceived, written, and designed by interdisciplinary artist and writer Suzanne Bocanegra, the installation is organized around four newly commissioned songs by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Shara Nova, Julia Wolfe, and Ayanna Woods. Each movement responds to a different disaster—tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, or wildfires. Practical survival guidance appears alongside the music and imagery, creating an atmosphere that is intimate, unsettling, darkly humorous, and at times frightening. The work considers both physical survival and the roles that technology, community, memory, art, and shared knowledge may play in helping people endure climate change, environmental disruption, and weather-related displacement.
When: November 20, 2026–January 3, 2027
Venue: The Fabric Workshop and Museum, First Floor Gallery, 1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
Tickets: Free, with a suggested $10 donation; admission is included with general admission
Opening Celebration: Friday, December 4, 2026
Opening Events: Suzanne Bocanegra artist talk from 6:00–7:00 p.m., followed by a public reception from 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Artists: Suzanne Bocanegra with The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally
Music: Four new songs by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Shara Nova, Julia Wolfe, and Ayanna Woods
Format: The installation incorporates live and recorded choral sound, film, moving images, costume, and visual installation. The page does not specify a running time.
Suzanne Bocanegra: Bocanegra is an American interdisciplinary artist and writer, born in 1957 and based in New York. Her previous work includes *Poorly Watched Girls*, developed during a 2019 residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, as well as the video installation *Valley*, the work *Cradled* made with Frances McDormand, and the performance *Honor, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra*, starring Lili Taylor. She has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Rome prize, and her work is held by collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The Crossing: The Crossing is a professional chamber choir led by Donald Nally that specializes in new music. It has commissioned more than 200 premieres, many addressing social, environmental, and political subjects, and has released 41 albums. The ensemble has won four Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance—in 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2025—and has received 11 Grammy nominations across 10 consecutive years. It was named Musical America’s 2024 Ensemble of the Year.
Support: The project is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional funding from Carol Westfall, The New England Foundation for Psychoanalysis, and the National Endowment for the Arts.