MARFA SOUNDING 2018 ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Tarek Atoui is an artist and electroacoustic composer working within the realm of sound performance. His practice often develops from extensive research into music history and instrumentation, revolving around large-scale, collaborative performances that explore new methods of production. Integrating education and social connection, his work reveals an ongoing reflection on the instrument and the act of performing as a multifaceted, open, and dynamic process. Using custom-built electronic and acoustic instruments, Atoui references current social and political realities, revealing music and new technologies as powerful components of expression and identity.
Born in 1980 in Lebanon, Atoui moved to France in 1998 where he studied music at the French National Conservatory of Reims. Previously the artistic director at Steim in Amsterdam, a center for the research and development of new electronic musical instruments, some of his recent exhibitions and performances include: Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2016); Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2014/2015); New Museum, New York, United States (2010); and La Maison Rouge, Paris, France (2010). He has participated in biennials including: the Marrakech Biennale, Morocco (2016); 8th Berlin Biennial (2014); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012); and Sharjah Biennials 9 and 11, United Arab Emirates (2009/2013).
Jad Atoui is a Lebanese music composer and electronic sounds experimentalist. Using his bio-sensors, field recordings and analog gears he composes and performs electronic music. His work has been featured in Pompidou Center (2012, Paris) and The Stone (NYC). Jad Atoui has worked and performed with musicians like John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, Bill Frisell and Chuck Bettis. In 2015 he spearheaded the “Biosonics” project in collaboration with scientist Ivan Marazzi in order to incorporate bio-sonification of behaviors as compositional tool. The project was later published in John Zorn’s Arcana Book Vol. XVIII and premiered at The National Sawdust as part of The Stone’s commissioning series.
Amma Ateria (Jeanie-Aprille Tang) is an electroacoustic composer, improviser, and sound artist born in Hong Kong, based in California. Her practice in sound examines the coexistence of polarity in the sonic spectrum. With an immediacy of tension and release through linear progressions and spatialization in space, her performance and improvisation consist cross-modal synesthetic influences from the contemporary moment. Thus the movements in sound expose her body’s visceral resonance in polar opposites, examining boundaries and brinks of breakage in the sonic spectrum via saturated transitions of stark polarities. With memories of condensed cities, she gravitates to frequencies of close-ranged airplanes, inaudible conversations, out of body experiences, sustained harmonics intersected with musique concrète, and distorted speech as melodic element. Since her studies at Mills College in music composition, audio engineering, and media technology, her work has been presented in installation and performance as artist-in-residence at SoART, Austria (2013), Titanik Gallery, Finland (2014), The Stone, New York (2016), San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, San Francisco (2016), BAMPFA, Berkeley (2017), and Exploratorium, San Francisco (2018).
ROBERT AIKI AUBREY LOWE
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (b. 1975) is an artist and multi instrumentalist that works with voice in the realm of spontaneous music often under the moniker of Lichens. Most recently, creating patch pieces with modular synthesizer and singing to them has been a focus of live performance and recordings. Quality of sound through the marriage of synthesis coupled with voice has allowed for a heightened physicality in the way of ecstatic music, both in a live setting and recorded. The sensitivity of analogue modular systems echoes the organic nature of vocal expression which in this case is meant to put forth a trancelike state. To usher in Deep Listening through sound and feeling. Losing one's self in sound while being acutely self aware. By way of a recent meeting and collaboration with artist Patrick Smith, Robert has begun to utilize projections with live performances. The current video piece is called "Clouds" which is a vector driven animation made by Patrick Smith. Through collaboration Robert has worked with Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, Rose Lazar, Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Tarek Atoui, Ben Vida, Mark Borthwick, Lucky Dragons, Alan Licht, Michael Zerang, Doug Aitken, Patrick Smith, Monica Baptista, Lee Ranaldo, White/Light, Kevin Martin, Chris Johanson, Tyondai Braxton, David Scott Stone, Genesis P-Orridge and Rose Kallal, as well as many others.
CURATORS
JENNIFER BURRIS STATON (Marfa Sounding Co-Founder and Curator)
Jennifer Burris Staton is an independent curator based in Bogotá, where she is director of Athénée Press. She has curated exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Haverford College, Philadelphia; and The Kitchen, New York. In 2018 she will curate a museum-wide survey of performance artist María José Arjona at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia. A graduate of Cambridge University (Ph.D) and Princeton University (A.B.), she was a 2010–2011 Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program and the 2011–2013 Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
IDA SOULARD (Co-Director, Fieldwork Marfa and Curator)
Ida Soulard is a doctoral researcher in art history at l’ENS / PSL University and Co-Director of Fieldwork Marfa: an international research-in-residence program in Marfa, Texas. With Fieldwork Marfa, she is leading an ambitious new program at the intersection of critical theory, spatial practices, and contemporary art. In 2011 she co-founded a series of seminars and workshops titled The Matter of Contradiction (2011–2013) and in 2012 co-initiated Glass Bead, an online journal and research platform. She currently teaches at Nantes School of Art.
