Expanded Sonic Gestures

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | An evening of experiential explorations into the relationships between sound/space, performer/audience and instrument/matter. Using an expanded palette of sound-making devices and strategies, the performers bring attention to the sonic and meaning potential of various materials.

Anastasia Clarke is a New York-based composer, performer, and audio technologist working in live embodied electronic music performance. Anastasia's solo and collaborative projects use custom musical instruments and performing systems, functioning as sites for research and meaning-making around the subjects of physical instrument interaction, improvisation, and the healing efficacies of sound and listening work. In addition to performing in venues ranging from galleries and concert halls to DIY venues and intimate house shows across the United States, Anastasia has recently spoken or given hands-on presentations of their work with electronic hardware and software at NIME 2018, Expo ’74, The School for Poetic Computation, and Barnard College. Anastasia earned an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2018 and a B.A. from Bennington College in 2010. In 2019, she is the recipient of a New Works Grant from the Queens Arts Fund, and has been a guest composer at EMS in Stockholm. 

Thessia Machado is a visual/sound artist, instrument builder and performer. Her work plumbs the materiality of sound and its effect on our shifting perceptions of space. She creates circumstances in which to mine the matter of her pieces for their innate physical properties and the sonic and visual relationships that can arise from their interactions. In the performed works, the ensemble of things is augmented by a dynamically responsive and intentionally unpredictable human element. Electronics are almost always implicated. Thessia’s sculptures, drawings and sound installations have been broadly exhibited in the US and Europe. Most recently she had a solo show at the Arts Club of Chicago in early 2019. She has performed with her handmade and modified instruments both in respectable institutions, such as the Drawing Center, The American Academy in Berlin, Issue Project Room, as well as in dilapidated basements and experimental spaces throughout Brooklyn and beyond. She was awarded the Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artist’s Grant in 2017. Machado has attended residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Homesession, Barcelona, Yaddo, Ipark, NARS Foundation, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. And she is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Experimental Television Center and The Bronx Museum. For the fall of 2019 Machado is a visiting faculty member at Bennington College, VT, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the spring of 2020.

Senem Pirler (she/her) is an intermedia-sound artist whose work is an interdisciplinary attempt that crosses over into sound engineering, sound art, video art, dance, performance, and installation. Pirler’s recent work has been exhibited at EMPAC, Roulette, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Mount Tremper Arts, and Collar Works, NY. Her work has been recognized by grants, residencies, and awards including most recently PACT Zollverein residency, Signal Culture residency and The Malcolm S. Morse Graduate Research Enhancement Award to honor the work of Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening in 2018. Pirler earned her M.M. in Music Technology the Stephen F. Temmer Tonmeister Honors Track from NYU Steinhardt, and her Ph.D. in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Pirler joined the Bennington faculty in Fall 2018.

Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc since 2001. Uenishi is known for her works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one's relationship through sounds in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological environments. She is currently working on a project towards a doctoral degree at PhD in Practice at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Partitions: Dividers, Connectors, Gray-zones, Neighbours in Aural Space, an exploration of a “para-sphere” where auditory stimuli sneak over other perceptions, while de-stabilizing relationships, memories, space recognitions and time. Her works include: SOUNDLEAK: TheROOM (Simulation of neighbours) at Medien Kultur Haus, Wels, Austria, BroadwayDreams (participatory 'blink media documentation'), performative interpretation of Christian Marclaysʼ object score, Sixty-Four Bells and a Bow at Whitney Museum of Art. Uenishi is a co-creator of the project LandFilles with Katherine Liberovskaya, in which they investigate in the usability of recyclable trash through their artistic social actions and live performances. In 2017, she launched a research project: Place Reimagined through Aural Memory in Taipei at Taipei Artist Village Treasure Hill and Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei, Taiwan, sponsored by Residency Unlimited, NYC that has been continuing to develop in Lido, Venice, Italy (2017) and most recently in Andore Village, Rajasthan, India (2019). Uenishiʼs works were presented in locations including: Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S. 1, DIA:Beacon, Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Eyebeam, Skolska28, Museu Serralves, ICA London, Tate Britain, Fortescue Avenue Gallery, Maebashi Bunka Cultural Laboratory, Research Pavilion Venice. Her collaboration with artists including: Ricardo Arias, Klaus Filip, Miguel Frasconi, Richard Garet, HC Gilje, Takehisa Kosugi, Christian Marclay, Kaffe Matthews, Ikue Mori, Kurt Ralske, Marina Rosenfeld. Uenishi holds LL.B in International Law from Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, MS in Digital Media from Polytechnic Institute of New York University and is a PhD candidate at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien.