PRESENTATION: Taker Atoui-The Whisperers

Tarek Atoui’s 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.

By Dimitris LEmpesis
Photo: GfZK Archive

Tarek Atoui’s research and compositional process is highly collaborative and generates networks of community involvement. He works with other musicians, composers, and instrument makers around the world to develop custom materials he calls “tools for listening,” which conduct and amplify sounds in multisensory ways. In tandem with this process, he invites participation from people where his projects are located to involve musicians and non-musicians alike in creative explorations.  For the GfZK’s Neubau, Tarek Atoui creates an expanded play and educational space derived from his series “The Whisperers” and its methodology, which emerged from workshop sessions that took place in a kindergarten in Paris. In Leipzig, visitors can explore various instruments and interactive soundscapes through objects and protocols provided by the artist, or listen to Leipzig musicians improvising and experimenting with these elements.  Atoui’s understanding of sound has been shaped by many years of working with children, composers, craftspeople, musicians and deaf people. His artistic practice is rooted in the art of the 1960s, when artists shifted their focus towards the activation of audiences. Musically, he has been particularly influenced by the possibilities of electronic composition and improvised music.  “The Whisperers” is a series of listening devices composed of different materials that conduct and amplify sound in multi-sensory ways. These assemblages bring together plastic, wood, brass, water, bronze, glass and stone, experimenting with each material acoustic properties and the unique ways they transmit and reflect sound. Through “The Whisperers” Atoui invites the visitor to interact and experience it in fresh and innovative ways, they offer a medium for discovery and unpredictable, undoing the familiar and known. Between October 2020 and January 2021, a first set of “The Whisperers was created for the trust & confusion exhibition curated by Raimundas Malasauskas at the Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong-Kong. For his exhibition at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Atoui has created a new series influenced and inspired by five workshop sessions that took place between November 2020 and June 2021 in a kindergarten classroom, l’École alsacienne in Paris, with 5-year-old students. “[…] 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”. 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.

Performers: Alicia Franzke, Anna Schimkat, Amelie Neumann, Arne Hermann, Aura Danielle, Bruno Haas, Charlotte Haufe, Cecilia Tosh, Ersan Eke, Filip Bayer-Čech, Gregor Behrendt, Jakob Bayertz, Jonas Petry, Lena Löhr, Leon Billerbeck, Leon Goltermann, Malo Moray, Maria Winkler, Mina Bamani, Nessie Henning, Sébastien Branche, Patrícia Pinheiro¸ Uwe Fischer, Katharina Zimmerhackl, Vitiko Schell

Photo: Tarek Atoui, The Whisperers, Installation view, The Contemporary Austin/Jonas Center, 2022, Photo: Colin Doyle

Info: Curators: Franciska Zólyom and Hanar Hupka, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Karl-Tauchnitz-Str.  Leipzig, Germany, Duration: 15/6-13/10/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-18:00, https://gfzk.de/