美国国家公共电台 NPR--Melting guns and bullet casings, this artist turns weapons into bells

Melting guns and bullet casings, this artist turns weapons into bells

Transcript¹

Inside an art gallery in southwest Washington, D.C., artist Stephanie Mercedes is surrounded by bells, many of them cast from bullet casings and parts of old guns.

"I melt down weapons and transform them into musical installations and musical instruments," she explains.

Bells captivate Mercedes as a medium, she says, because they carry spiritual significance across cultures. Their sound purifies space. At a time when mass shootings regularly rock the country, bells are also tools of mourning. The death knells² of her instruments first memorialized the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla. It was that tragedy that inspired this project.

"Because I'm gay, I'm Latina, and I easily could have been there," she says. But Mercedes points out that most of us could be anywhere a mass shooting happens — a grocery store, a concert hall, a workplace, a school. Part of her work involves recording³ the sounds of weapons melting in her furnace and composing the audio into soundscapes for her shows, including the one where we talked, called A Sky of Shattered Glass Reflected by the Shining Sun at Culture House.

"Guns are normally a combination of galvanized steel and aluminum," she says. "So I have to cut those down and melt them at different temperatures or through different casting processes."

"As casters, we wear these big leather aprons⁴, because molten metal is very dangerous for your body. But there's something very meditative⁵ about that process because, in that moment, you're holding this strange, transformed, liquid metal, and you only have a few seconds to pour it into a shape it truly wants to become. "

Many of Mercedes' bells are not beautiful. Some look like the weapons they used to be. Others are small, twisted bells that look like primitive⁶ relics⁷, from a ruined civilization. Primitive relics, the artist says, are something she hopes all guns will one day be.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 knells   

n.丧钟声( knell的名词复数 )；某事物结束的象征

参考例句：

• When bell knells, when banshee wails; you know, the time is come. 丧钟敲响，女妖嚎哭；你知道，大限到了。 来自互联网

3 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

4 aprons   

围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份）

参考例句：

• Many people like to wear aprons while they are cooking. 许多人做饭时喜欢系一条围裙。
• The chambermaid in our corridor wears blue checked gingham aprons. 给我们扫走廊的清洁女工围蓝格围裙。

5 meditative   

adj.沉思的，冥想的

参考例句：

• A stupid fellow is talkative;a wise man is meditative.蠢人饶舌，智者思虑。
• Music can induce a meditative state in the listener.音乐能够引导倾听者沉思。

6 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

7 relics   

[pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸

参考例句：

• The area is a treasure house of archaeological relics. 这个地区是古文物遗迹的宝库。
• Xi'an is an ancient city full of treasures and saintly relics. 西安是一个有很多宝藏和神圣的遗物的古老城市。