Josephine Foster
Josephine Foster
Josephine Foster is a composer of experimental folk music. Born in Colorado and trained in classical singing, her practice focuses on the voice and sung poetry, which she infuses with experimental folk, country blues, and experimental song. While in Providenza, her residency is dedicated to improvising and composing on the piano for a new, entirely instrumental album, as well as writing songs.
EPICRITICAL VIBRISSA
providential hymn-chants
Drawing on psychologist James Gibson's concept of the “epicritical
vibrissa” (the phenomenon by which sensation is felt not at the point of
contact but at the tip of an external tool), my work at Providenza has
been to explore voice as a navigational instrument.
Across my years of nomadic living, singing remains my manner of
sensing, assimilating, and making offerings to unfamiliar places far and
wide.
In Corsica my inquiry expanded through the physical and spiritual
presence of a chestnut walking stick, which became both a practical aid
on rocky ground and a conduit of sensitivity connecting me further to
the island's landscape.
This percussive 'vibrissa' patterned a rhythm to my daily movements,
and I found myself chanting along to its punctuating sound while
wandering the steep terrain.
The raw vocal compositional material at the heart of this work originated
five years ago during a period of acute crisis, when a condition of severe
hyperacusis rendered all external sound unbearable.
In response, I began channeling near-daily bursts of spontaneous healing
song, intimate chants in which specific vowel and consonant clusters
sent resonance into my inner ears as a form of internal repair.
At the residency, these chants resurfaced and found new form. Listening
back to the initial recordings, I reflected upon which of them held the
most transpersonal power and meaning.
From that selection I transcribed each to musical notation. Directly
inspired by the walking stick rhythms, percussive settings emerged at the
music studio's drum set in a way that felt expansive and revelatory. A
providential healing arc from the inner ear-drums to external drums.
Refined and assembled during my weeks at Providenza, the chants may
accompany specific elemental ritual actions that remain steadfastly part
of the human condition through time. Envisioning them as proto-hymns for future communal ritual use, perhaps by future long-term inhabitants
of the land.
Fascinated by Mediterranean prehistoric matriarchal cultures, and with
new inspiration in the Corsican figure of the Signadora, a ceremonial
healer who clears negative energy through song. I feel these are
offerings to that lineage.
The hymn-chant collection is a work in progress that inhabits a
translinguistic space, pre- or post-verbal, imagined as seeds of a new
mother tongue, crafted to move frequency and energy through both body
and community.
Video by Anton Bialas
June 2026 at Providenza
Credits
Portrait : Doriane
Photos : Personal photographs taken by Josephine Foster during her residency at Providenza, June 2026.