Tarek Atoui

February 16 - March 05, 2021

Tuesdays & Fridays - 3 pm Beirut time

This workshop will be held online

Registration is closed.

In October 2020, for a kindergarten class composed of 4 year-old students, artist Tarek Atoui organized workshops sessions focusing on manipulating sound objects and listening. Working with children in a classroom environment created a rich set of parameters that brought Atoui to think through his practice and develop a series of tools, set ups, and exercises for this particular context. Currently, these sessions are informing Atoui's methods of teaching and working with wider audiences, from teenagers and university students to sound educators and practitioners.

How do we amplify a space, and how do we use speakers and microphones in liquids, solids, and gases? How do we work with rotations and cycles through turntables, motors, and objects that spin? How do we sonically articulate the human body, automation, and algorithms? And how do we translate sound into energy, motion, and power? These are some of the questions that Atoui will be proposing through his workshop at Ashkal Alwan's Home Workspace Program. 

The course will last three weeks and will be divided into four chapters of 3 hours each, punctuated by moments of reading and experimentation. Through each chapter, Atoui will be sharing the tools and techniques he uses, alongside existing scholarly work and examples from his previous work. Each chapter will end with a series of hands-on exercises and interventions that can be practiced individually or in groups.

Participants should be interested in education, listening, and sound practices. Prior experience of working with music or sound is not required.

Tarek Atoui is an artist and composer, working within the realm of sound. He is not only interested in how audio events or sounds develop an acoustic effect. Equally important to him is how these phenomena can be perceived with sensory organs other than the ear, how they act as a catalyst for human interaction, and how they relate to social, historical, or spatial parameters. The point of departure for his works is usually anthropological, ethnological, musicological, or technical, all of which result in the realisation of instruments, listening spaces, performances, or workshops. Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Sharjah Biennial and Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates (2009, 2013 and 2021); dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany (2012); the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014); Tate Modern, London (2016); CCA NTU, Singapore (2017); Garage Moscow (2018); the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2019), and the Okayama Art Summit (2019).  He was appointed co-artistic director of STEIM Studios in 2007, and of the Bergen Assembly, a triennial for contemporary art in Norway, in 2016. Atoui currently lives and works in Paris, France.