Why Whisper Series / Broken Throat Theatre

WHY WHISPER SUMMER SERIES
at What Lab

Why Whisper Summer Series at What Lab presents collaborations between media artists and experimental musicians through one-night-only multimedia installations and live sound art performances.

Inspired by themes of broken data, miscommunication, information glitches, noise, and overload, each event explores experimental approaches to sound, performance, and new media composition.

EVENT 01
BROKEN THROAT THEATRE
with Rafael Zen, Khalil Alomar, Kaila Bhullar, and Viviane Wu

Thursday, July 9, 2026
8:00 PM
What Lab

The first event of the series brings together multimedia performers Rafael Zen, Khalil Alomar, Kaila Bhullar, and Viviane Wu for an evening of sound theatre, physical performance, electronic music, and sonic collage.

Drawing from speculative language practices, vocal experimentation, and media performance, Broken Throat Theatre explores miscommunication, data decay, and fractured systems of meaning.

Through live sound-making, movement, and multimedia interventions, the performance interrogates the verbal and informational worlds that surround us.

The event will also present an opening manifesto by Indigenous sound artist Toni-Leah C. Yake.

This project was supported by the British Columbia Arts Council and What Lab.

We thank our community partners: What Lab, Vivo Media Arts and Unit/Pitt.

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Admission is free.

RSVP is recommended.

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Accessibility

What Lab is located in East Vancouver and is accessible by public transit. All-gender washrooms are available on site. The main entrance includes a staircase; audience members with mobility needs may access the venue through the rear entrance from the alley.

Please note that this performance may include loud sounds, amplified audio, and flashing lights.

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MEET THE ARTISTS

Rafael Zen (MA in Contemporary Arts) is a queer Brazilian-Canadian multimedia performer and experimental new media composer working across performance, sound theatre, video, installation, coding, and wearable technologies. Their practice develops cyborg performances that merge body, sound, and digital systems, using glitch and fragmentation as critical strategies. Through live and collaborative work, they build immersive sonic environments engaging labour, burnout, coloniality, and identity under technological mediation. Zen’s work moves between stage, screen, and installation, combining experimental composition, spoken word, and interactive systems. Performance is framed as a site of rupture where sound becomes embodied expression and infrastructural critique. Recent collaborators include the Vancouver Biennale, BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Western Front Gallery, Kokoro Dance Society, and Theatre Replacement.

Khalil Alomar is a queer Lebanese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist working across sound art, multimedia performance, and multichannel installation to create immersive, participatory environments that merge analog circuitry, digital systems, and speculative storytelling. Their practice engages themes of race, queerness, ecology, and technology, questioning how relation, orientation, and multiplicity shape lived experience. Through an anti-colonial lens, they critique extractive logics of colonial capitalism and instead propose alternative modes of being grounded in refusal, care, and imagination. Their work explores encounters between human, non-human, and technological systems, focusing on moments of connection, dissonance, and transformation. Collaboration is central to their process, enabling collective improvisation where material and relation co-emerge, producing works that imagine tender, livable, and just futures.

Kaila Bhullar (she/they) is a queer Indo-Chilean media artist, designer, and technician based on unceded Coast Salish territories. Working with experimental sound, immersive installation, and moving image, Bhullar explores techno-organic systems and post-human aesthetics. They hold a BFA from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts and are completing a Sound Design diploma at Vancouver Film School. Bhullar has worked with Lobe Studio, What Lab, and Red Gate, among others. Their layered media practice blends analog and digital textures in installations, performances, and spatial sound, with a strong focus on collaborative, immersive, and speculative environments.

Viviane Wu is a Chinese-Canadian interdisciplinary artist working in experimental performance, new media, and post-dramatic theatre. Based between Vancouver and Berlin, Wu holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and creates multilingual works blending puppetry, clown, video, and installation. Their practice explores identity, perception, and cultural history, including research-based work in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Berlin’s drag scene. Recent performances include WORD VOMIT (SFU, rEvolver Festival) and Order of the New Hyphae (Rumble). Viviane also works as a technician, researcher, and performer in immersive projects across Europe and Canada, bridging media, language, and embodiment.

Toni-Leah C. Yake (European; Kanien’kehá:ka, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Turtle Clan) is a composer-performer and media artist working on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ territories. Her practice explores land, memory, dreaming, world-building, and embodied response through sound art, performance, moving image, installation, and social practices. Informed by dream interpretation, Kanien’kehá:ka epistemology, and the interplay between conscious and unconscious realms, Yake works within liminal spaces using archival recordings, synthesis, and noise. She is the recipient of the Southam Prize for Music, the First Peoples’ Cultural Council Individual Artist Award, and the SFSS Undergraduate Award for Indigenous Students. Her work has been published in BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly (Sound Works, University of British Columbia) and Canadian Theatre Review (Toronto Press). Her work and collaborations have been presented at the Vancouver New Music Festival, the Vancouver Biennial, and Polygon Gallery. She is currently the Core Artist with The Only Animal Theatre Company.

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