Tarek Atoui: The Whisperers

OCTOBER 1-DECEMBER 10, 2022

Performance Schedule:
Wednesday, October 26, 7:30-8:30 PM: Jad Atoui, Chuck Bettis, Robby Bowen, and Nava Dunkelman
Saturday, November 12, 6:30-7:30 PM: Tarek Atoui
Friday, December 9, 6:30-7:30 PM: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

The recipient of the 2022 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, Paris-based artist and composer Tarek Atoui will present a reconfigured and expanded version of The Whisperers (recently on view at The Contemporary Austin) that includes two new sculptural components and a roster of collaborators unique to this presentation, including sound artists Jad Atoui, Susie Ibarra, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. Over a two-month span, collaborators will use the exhibition as a site for experimentation and regularly interact with the installation through improvisational activations, community-based workshops, and performances.

The Whisperers began during the pandemic as a series of workshops Atoui conducted with his son’s kindergarten class in Paris. “[…]Instead of shifting my practice to the net and making it virtual,” states Atoui, “I started to think, what audiences are still available in the context of lockdown.” Working with four and five-year-old students, the artist found ways to generate collective discoveries through four exploratory questions: How can we amplify spaces by using speakers and microphones immersed in solids, liquids, and gasses? How can we create non-repetitive sounds using objects that rotate or spin? How can we use our bodies to articulate sounds through gestures and performance? How can we translate sounds into sources of motion and energy? “These sessions brought me back to the basics of my practice and made me reconsider elementary things: how I work with speakers, how I work with microphones, with rotation and turntables and records, with sound in air, sound in water, sound in metal, etc.”

A continuation of a project presented at the Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong (2021), Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris (2021), and The Contemporary Austin (2022), The Whisperers is an open-ended and cumulative investigation of sound and the ways it shapes perception. Atoui’s practice is rooted in experimentation and collaboration, and investigates how sounds can be experienced in multisensory ways, how sounds act as a catalyst for human interaction, and how sounds can relate to and be informed by social, historical, or spatial parameters. Creating assemblages of custom-built materials he calls "tools for listening," his modules combine wood, brass, water, bronze, glass, and stone to explore each material's acoustic and conductive properties and to build sonic environments within the gallery space.

An exhibition catalog co-published by The Contemporary, FLAG, and Radius Books can be found here.

Atoui and FLAG would like to recognize all those individuals who helped realize The Whisperers: research and production by Igor Porte, Alan Affichard, and Thomas Besset; sound composition by the artist and Jad Atoui; Studio recordings by Jad Atoui, Anthony Sahioun, and Charbel Haber; instruments by Daniel Araya, Sergei Filatov, Boris Shershenkov, Thierry Madiot, Serge Durin, and Igor Porte; bronze work by Coubertin Foundry; brass work by Mathieu Noblet; wood work by Julien Joubert and Loïc Martin; Tarek Atoui studio management and production by Pauline Roches; and sound artists and collaborators Jad Atoui, Chuck Bettis, Robby Bowen, Nava Dunkelman, Susie Ibarra, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe.

About:

Tarek Atoui (b. 1980, Beirut Lebanon) is an artist and composer living and working in Paris, France. His work stems from performance and investigates how sound can be perceived with sensory organs other than the ear, how sound acts as a catalyst for human interaction, and how it relates to social, historical, or spatial parameters. The point of departure for his works is usually extensive anthropological, ethnological, musicological, or technical research, which results in the realization of instruments, listening rooms, performances, or workshops.

Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Sharjah Biennial (2009 and 2013); dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel (2012); 8th Berlin Biennale (2014); Tate Modern, London (2016); NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2018); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Okayama Art Summit (2019); Sharjah Art Foundation (2020); Fridericianum, Kassel (2020); and Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Paris (2021). He was appointed co-artistic director of STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam in 2007, and of the Bergen Assembly in Norway in 2016. The 2022 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize exhibitions will be the artist’s first solo museum exhibitions in Texas and New York.

The Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize is a biennial award given to an accomplished living artist selected by an independent advisory committee. Administered by The Contemporary Austin, the prize includes a $200,000 unrestricted award, a solo exhibition premiering at The Contemporary and traveling to FLAG, related public programming at each organization, and an accompanying scholarly publication. The award recognizes an artist demonstrating outstanding merit with a strong record of international museum and gallery exhibitions and for whom the advisory committee deems the award to be transformative.

Led by Heather Pesanti, former Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Contemporary Austin, the 2022 Advisory Committee included Darby English, Carl Darling Buck Professor, Department of Art History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Ingrid Schaffner, Curator, The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; and Catherine Wood, Senior Curator, International Art (Performance), Tate Modern, London, UK; along with institutional advisor Stephanie Roach, FLAG’s former Director.

Collaborators:

Jad Atoui (b. 1993) is a Beirut-based sound artist and improviser whose work spans live performance, compositions, installations, and workshops. Atoui composes and performs electronic and electro-acoustic music, and has performed and worked with musicians including Laurie Anderson, Tarek Atoui, Chuck Bettis, Pauline Oliveros, Jawad Nawfal & Anthony Sahyoun, John Zorn, among others. He has also given and co-directed workshops at Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, Lebanon), Beirut Synth Center (Beirut, Lebanon), and Marfa Sounding (Marfa, TX). Commissioned work folio includes residencies at the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut, Lebanon), Beirut Art Center (Beirut, Lebanon), National Sawdust (New York, NY), Sharjah Art Foundation (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates), and The Stone (New York, NY).

 During his time at The Stone and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Atoui became interested in New York City’s avant-garde scene while working closely with downtown musicians and learning improvised music techniques. In 2015, Atoui spearheaded “Biosonics,” a project developed in collaboration with scientist Ivan Marazzi, PhD, in order to incorporate bio-sonification of behaviors as compositional tools. “Biosonics” was later published in John Zorn’s Arcana Book Vol. XVIII and premiered at National Sawdust as part of The Stone’s commissioning series.

Atoui and Anthony Sahyoun formed the electronic producers duo NP, which released LATTICES, its first album of grainy, evocative ambient explorations (Ruptured, 2021). Recent musical ventures also include joining Kinematik's Ensemble 1: Al Jadi (2021). Atoui is part of the electronic musicians collective Frequent Defect, which organizes music-related events in Beirut, Lebanon. Click here for more information.

Susie Ibarra (b. 1970) is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Ibarra’s interdisciplinary practice spans formats, including performance, mobile sound-mapping applications, multi-channel audio installations, recording, and documentary. Many of her projects are based in cultural and environmental preservation: she has worked to support Indigenous and traditional music cultures, such musika katatubo from the North and South Philippine islands; her sound research advocates for the stewardship of glaciers and freshwaters; and she collaborates with The Joudour Sahara Music Program in Morocco on initiatives that preserve sound-based heritage with sustainable music practices and support the participation of women and girls in traditional music communities.

As a producer, Ibarra collaborates with Splice to create sound packs based in environmental sounds, traditional musical cultures, and her own extended percussion language. Sounds of the Drâa Valley Morocco is a sound pack featuring six traditional ensembles and soloists from South Saharan Morocco (2022). Ibarra has also collaborated with composer and bassist Richard Reed Parry on two sound packs and a new album of compositions focused on breath cycles and heart beats, Heart and Breath: Rhythm and Tone Fields (OFFAIR Records, 2022).

Ibarra is a recipient of the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Award in Music/ Sound, National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship (2020); United States Artists Fellowship in Music (2019); the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (2018); and a TED Fellowship (2010). She is a Yamaha, Vic Firth, and Zildjian drum artist. Click here for more information.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (b. 1975) is an artist, curator, and composer who works primarily with, but not limited to, voice and modular synthesizer for sound in the realm of spontaneous music. Along with analog video synthesis works, Lowe has brought forth an A/V proposal that has been a focus of live performance and installation/exhibition. The marriage of synthesis and the 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 synthesis echoes the organic nature of vocal expression, which in this case, is meant to put forth a trancelike state.

 Lowe has recently focused on composition for film, both in solo scoring and collaboration, and has provided sound in a featured artist capacity for such films as Arrival, End of Summer, It Comes at Night (with Brian McOmber), Last and First Men (with Johann Johannsson), and Sicario. He recently scored Candyman (for Nia DaCosta), The Color of Care (for Yance Ford), Il colpo del cane (for Fulvio Risuleo), and Master (for Mariama Diallo). His works on paper tend towards human relations to the natural/magical world and the repetition of motifs.

Lowe has collaborated with ADULT., Tarek Atoui, Nicolas Becker, Biba Bell, Hildur Guđnadóttir, Susie Ibarra, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Rose Kallal, Ariel Kalma, Rose Lazar, Philippe Parreno, Sabrina Ratté, Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, Evan Calder Williams, Alexandra Wolkowicz, YoshimiO, among many others.

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Press:

“Activation is key in [Tarek] Atoui’s visual universe, not only through the viewer’s tactile engagement but also his system of constantly recording the spatial sounds to feed back into the experience. Echoes, delays, replays, and booms create a ceaseless transformation. For Atoui who also works with people hearing impaired in his sound projects, hearing is a tactile experience as well. ‘Touching surfaces and feeling vibrations can be a way to hear,’ he said. ‘The Whisperer in this sense is an invitation to listen differently.’”

—Osman Can Yerebakan, Cultured Magazine

“In a way, The Whisperers looks like a Rube Goldberg machine, with a pre-programmed ‘brain’ telling each module when to drip, ripple, vibrate, or spin. The chain reaction consists of three layers: sound organically made from the movement of these various devices, electronic compositions, and field recordings by [Tarek] Atoui (captured in the ports of Abu Dhabi, Athens, and Singapore), and ‘additives’ such as a turntable that visitors may wish to try themselves.”

—Barbara Purcell, Glasstire

“Tarek Atoui’s exhibition The Whisperers is a meticulously orchestrated playground in which each “tool for listening,” as he calls them, triggers a mechanism that generates a series of chain reactions and feedback effects. These new sculptures, first exhibited at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris last year, emerged out of a collaboration with a class of kindergarten students on an ongoing sound workshop. They conserve their experimental, ludic quality with playful titles given for the form each assemblage evokes, or the associations it whimsically stirs up.”

—Rachel Valinsky, e-flux