The last chapter of a project initiated in 2014 in Berlin, the performance consists of ten instruments which will be played in the South Tank at Tate Modern until October 5, 2016.
Tarek Atoui’s sound pieces are be based on three new scores by the artist and two other composers. They are intended as structures for improvisation rather than finished compositions, and will be in dialogue with the instrument makers and musicians invited to play by the artist.
Reversing the order in which instruments are usually created, Tarek Atoui took the sounds of a collection of ethnic musical instruments from The Dahlem Museum as a starting point for The Reverse Sessions. The artist used the audio recordings of live performances that he wrote and directed, to collaborate with instrument makers on imagining and building the objects that could have generated these recordings. Without involving any images, Atoui proposed to engage with sound directly - contrary to the path of ethnomusicology that studies the shape and mechanism of an instrument with an emphasis on its cultural and social context. The Reverse Sessions is the result of this collaboration: nine original instruments that combine string, wind and percussion, which were activated during performances and rehearsals that took place over the duration of Atoui’s exhibition at Tate Modern.
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