FRIDAY APRIL 9TH 2021

a.hop / Tomoko Sauvage / angela rawlings / Thomas van Walle / Rebekah Alero

a.hop is a newly-formed international band whose aim is to perform diverse compositions and ideas. The members are : Anne-F Jacques, Bonnie Jones, Elizabeth Millar, Liew Niyomkarn, Lynette Quek, Ryoko Akama, Suzueri, Valentina Villarroel and Veronica Cerrotta.

Tomoko Sauvage is a Japanese musician and artist who is best known for her long-time sound experimentations on her unique instrument using water, ceramics and subaquatic microphones. Her research is grounded on live-performance-based practice incorporating elementary and unstable materials, ritualistic yet playful gestures, the improvisation with environments and the use of chance as a compositional method.

Sauvage’s performances have been presented internationally including Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, V&A Museum (London), Roskilde Festival, Centre Pompidou Metz and Nyege Nyege Festival (Uganda). Her installation piece has recently been exhibited at Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE) and Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris). Her third solo album Fischgeist was recorded in a water tank in Berlin and published by bohemian drips in 2020. She lives and works in Paris since 2003.

angela rawlings is an interdisciplinary artist using languages as dominant exploratory material. Her practice seeks and interrogates relational empathy between bodies—be they human, more-than-human, other-than, non. Meditating on languages as inescapable lenses of human engagement, rawlings’ methods over the past fifteen years have included sensorial poetries, vocal and contact improvisation, theatre of the rural, and conversations with landscapes. rawlings’ books include Sound of Mull (Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2019), Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), o w n (CUE BOOKS, 2015), and si tu (MaMa, 2017). Her libretti include Bodiless (for Gabrielle Herbst, 2014) and Longitude (for Davíð Brynjar Franzson, 2014). rawlings is half of the new-music duo Moss Moss Not Moss (with Rebecca Bruton) and the polypoetry duo Völva (with Maja Jantar).

Rebekah Alero - The Dandelion Project \\Archives\\

I have mostly been working with analogue means for this archive, using disposable film, pen to paper and analogue instrumentation. This wasn't a conscious decision in the beginning, however, upon further reflection I found that this was the most fulfilling way I could go about developing this archive. For many reasons including being able to work on it at a steadier pace, but also referring back to the tangibility of documentations. Having something that exists in 3D, to be held in one's hands and protected. Protection in the practical sense but also in the setting of recognition and permanency.

Rebekah Alero is a sound artist and composer.Working with both sound and image such as graphic scores, video and still image. They explore the use of documentation and research using these for their own self reflective works.They are currently focusing on the narrative of blackness within the context of archiving, and exploring ways in which these findings can be saved and preserved. Rebekah’s sound works and compositions focus on the voice and the use of digital and analogue experimentations with interests and influences in sonic hauntology.

Thomas van Walle

Portrayed by Ruth Wiesenfeld in the framework of TOWARDS SOUND

TOWARDS SOUND creates portraits of artists working in the field of sound based arts with a particular focus on the transition between the conception of a new work and its materialization. Artifacts of sketching beyond notation, brought about in the very beginning of a creative endeavor, reveal the intellectual cosmos, aesthetics and sensibility of an artistic stance. They are complimented by excerpts from conversations about artistic practice, inspiration, doubt, moments of failure, and obsession.

Thomas van Walle (°1984) is a visual artist, musician and architect based in Antwerp, Belgium. In his artistic practices the worlds of sound and image blend into each other to the extent that they become indistinguishable. Through series of drawings, paintings and etchings, he systematically explores how abstractions of everyday reality can be composed into new constellations. While in general these graphic compositions are guided by their potential to evoke imaginative worlds beyond their face value, some of them are specifically intended to function as graphic scores for musical compositions. His recent work is inspired by his daily commute to his musical and visual workshops in Brussels, a 40 minute train ride of metropolitan impressions that are condensed into micro-compositions jotted down into a pocket-sized notepad.

TOWARDS SOUND – initiated by the composer Ruth Wiesenfeld in 2020 – sees itself as an archive, network and educational project focused on visible traces of a creative process geared towards all sound based arts. Notes, sketches, drawings – inspired artifacts at the threshold between imagination and realization, created before the score or any kind of music notation, are collected in the The Fleeting Archive of TOWARDS SOUND. The Fleeting Archive is of a fluctuating and nomadic nature, its contributions remain the property of the artists. Without a fixed location, the archive travels to institutions and venues in the field of contemporary music in all its contexts, bringing the valuable witnesses of a creative journey out of the drawer and letting them become part of the current discourse in contemporary art.

Ruth Wiesenfeld’s artistic language wanders between musical composition, performance and visual art. Her body of works consists of scores in conventional as well as experimental forms of notation, sculptural objects, installations and videos. She teaches at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. Ruth holds a PhD in music composition from Dartington College of Arts / University of Plymouth, where she studied with Frank Denyer. The filmic version of Wiesenfeld‘s composition SPYR won the Prix Vidéoformes 2016. For the innovative use of sound in the short film “Pfffhp tt!”, Ruth Wiesenfeld and Deborah Phillips have been awarded the LEO of the International Filmfest Braunschweig 2012. Ruth collaborated with choreographers such as Sasha Waltz (Berlin) and shifts – art in movement (Rouen, France). Her compositions were performed by the string quartet of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Solistenensemble Kaleidsokop, Ensemble Ukho and the 16-voice ensemble PHØNIX16 (Guest Composer 2013/2104) amongst others.