ART-PRESENTATION: Tarek Atoui-Cycles in 11
Tarek Atoui is a musician, composer and sound artist working experimentally with custom-built electronic instruments. He initiates and curates multidisciplinary interventions, concerts, performances and workshops worldwide. These projects are based on extensive research into the history of music and instrumentation, while also exploring new methods of production.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Sharjah Art Foundation Archive
Tarek Atoui’s exhibition “Cycles in 11” centres around experimental and innovative musical forms and offers audiences opportunities to learn about and explore instrument-making, compositional structure and musical collaboration. The works in the exhibition, developed over the last 11 years, represent the culmination of the artist’s ongoing exploration of different methods of listening, composition and performance. The instruments Atoui has created are the product of extensive research into music history and tradition as well as collaborations with different experts. Challenging established ways of listening through innovative approaches to sound, the instruments also build on the artist’s earlier project “WITHIN”. During the exhibition, the heritage house Bait Al Serkal, located in one of the oldest areas in the city of Sharjah, will operate as both a sound lab and a performance and listening space informed by the local tradition of hospitality. In Sharjah’s east coast city of Kalba, another sound lab will be set up close to the emirate’s natural reserves and archaeological sites. Cycles in 11 will also be the starting point for a regional and international residency programme that will extend into 2022. Musicians, composers and artists will be invited to develop new work for the residency, either individually or with different audiences in Sharjah. From a Deaf person’s perspective, “WITHIN” also questions the act of listening and the way we build instruments, conduct composition, and improvisation, write scores and relate to an audience. Initiated in 2012 and enriched by the contribution of the curatorial duo Council (Sandra Terdjman & Gregory Castera). “WITHIN” further evolved at the Sharjah Biennale (2013), the Berkeley Art Museum, the Experimental Music and Performing Art Center – New-York (2015), ZKM – Karlsruhe (2016), the Bergen Assembly – Norway (2016) and the Galerie Chantal Crousel and IRCAM / Centre Pompidou – Paris (2017). Throughout this journey, Tarek Atoui conceived of an ensemble of 10 musical instruments which address Deaf and hearing people alike. Together with invited artists and composers, he activated these instruments in contexts that sought to create a common ground for collaborations between Deaf and hearing people, and to allow for real musical and performative experimentation.
Info: Curator: Hoor Al Qasimi, Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Duration: 19/9/20-10/4/21, Days & Hours: Sat-Thu 9:00-22:00, Fri 16:00-22:00, http://sharjahart.org
