Ashkal Alwan hosted a 5-day workshop with Hu Fang and Tarek Atoui at Home Workspace from Saturday 7th to Wednesday 11th December 2013.
In November 2012 in Guangzhou (China), Hu Fang and Tarek Atoui initiated a conversation on the notion of collective instruments that elaborates on Atoui’s work around this idea at dOCUMENTA (13). Each found the other in search of new ways and modes of listening, sharing and collaborating; this conversation led them to take the notion of place as a starting point for thinking around and conceiving such models and strategies.
In the framework of this workshop, Hu Fang and Atoui presented their work method and their ongoing project, then together with workshop participants, they took gardens in Beirut as a case study to look into and work from.
How can we find a way to transpose our relation, experience and perceptions from the encounter with these gardens into sound-making, composition and performance? How can elements such as the circulation of water, air and human beings, the lifecycle of vegetation, the consistency of the soil as well as other observed elements lead to sound awareness, score-writing and collective performance?