Tarek Atoui’s project WITHIN tackles the ways in which deafness can influence our understanding of sound performance, its space and instrumentation. Initiated in 2012 and enhanced by the collaboration of the curatorial duo Council (Sandra Terdjman & Gregory Castera), WITHIN carried on its evolution with the project’s invitations and exhibitions: Sharjah Biennial (2013), Berkeley Art Museum, USA (2015), Experimental Music and Performing Art Center - EMPAC, USA (2015), ZKM, Germany (2016), and more recently at the Bergen Assembly, Norway (2016). For the Bergen Assembly, where Tarek Atoui was also artistic co-director, the artist developed new instruments which expend the notion of hearing, beyond orality. The design of the instruments and their playability are the result of workshops and residencies where Tarek Atoui progressively made an instrumentarium in cooperation with acoustic instrument makers, speaker designers, software engineers, composers and Deaf and hearing people. In September 2016, the instruments were brought together for the first time in Sentralbadet, a forsaken swimming pool located in the center of Bergen in Norway where composers and musicians, both amateur and professional, Deaf and hearing people, were welcome to take possession of the exhibition space and test these instruments, playing them separately or as an ensemble.

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