TAREK ATOUI

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.

Atoui often articulates social realities and histories in his work, while presenting music as a powerful mode of expression and identity. His current works are process-based, collaborative projects and include composing sound works, making new types of musical instruments, and large-scale collaborative performances.

Over the past seven years, Atoui has researched the relationships between sound, vibrations, instruments and the body, starting with how the deaf perceive sound. He challenges, expands and revises our established and conventional ways of experiencing sound.

BIOGRAPHY

Tarek Atoui was born in Lebanon in 1980 and moved to France in 1998 where he studied sound art and electroacoustic music. In 2006, he released his first solo album as part of the Mort Aux Vaches series for Staalplaat Records and, in 2008, he served as artistic director of the STEIM Studios in Amsterdam, a centre for the research and development of new electronic musical instruments. Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2009 and 2013), New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (2010), Mediacity Biennial in Seoul (2010), Haus Der Kunst in Munich (2010), Performa 11 in New York (2011), Documenta 13 in Kassel (2012), Serpentine Gallery in London (2012), and the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014).