Never in Our Image is a three-part experimental opera that presents Mercedes’ process of gun transformation through sound. Mercedes creates musical instruments and sonic sculptures from reclaimed guns. Through cutting, melting, and utilizing instruments cast from weapons Mercedes composes musical scores. The work forces the archetype of violence into its opposite: the beauty of music and art. This three-part performance invites the public to become a part of the cathartic experience of gun transformation.

Using the captured audio, instruments, and sonic sculptures created in the previous acts, Mercedes and a team of LGBTQ+ performers will compose and collaborate at CulturalDC’s Blackbox Theatre in Source. Through operatic singing, dance, percussion, techno and contact microphones the performance will ask: how can the act of un-naming (sound, metal, weapons) be queer?