Touring 2020-2024
Sound is a sensorial and pliant material, an intangible part of daily life. For the artists in Seeing Sound, it is the chosen medium for experimentation when art is in a perpetual state of flux. Featuring the work of Seth Cluett, Juan Cortés, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Bani Haykal, Yuko Mohri, Marina Rosenfeld, Aura Satz, and Samson Young, the exhibition foregrounds artistic practices that deconstruct, rebuild, manipulate, and visualize audio experience through digital and analog means.
Working across music and composition, video and performance, sculpture and installation, the artists—from New York, London, Bogotá, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong—establish and highlight new meaning for the unheard by transcending conventional relationships to sound. Their work brings disparate contexts together: the drone of a telephone dial tone in relation to electronic music; pastoral silence that coexists with intermittent urban noise; or the imagined seraphic sounds of the universe.
Curated by Barbara London, a pioneering champion of time-based media, the exhibition places visitors in immersive encounters with sound as art. It challenges the private quality of our contemporary sonic experience. Instead of relying on headphones and earbuds, which isolate the listener, the artworks in the exhibition create expansive sonic landscapes.
The exhibition was developed with support from Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), giving access to the latest in sonic technology and providing venues with experimental advances for the presentation of sound works. Along the tour, art spaces will be able to integrate these technologies into their programming, to collaborate with an artist across the world, or create telematic, long-distance performances.
Artists: Seth Cluett, Juan Cortés, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Bani Haykal, Yuko Mohri, Marina Rosenfeld, Aura Satz, and Samson Young
Seeing Sound is a traveling exhibition curated by Barbara London, with the support of Research Assistant Kristen Clevenson and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI). This exhibition and tour are supported, in part, by Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) program and with the generous support of ICI’s Board of Trustees and International Forum.
Touring 2020-2024
About the Curator
Barbara London is a curator and writer who founded the video and media exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013. London organized include solo exhibitions with media pioneers Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Steina Vasulka, Joan Jonas, Shigeko Kubota, Peter Campus, Gary Hill, and Laurie Anderson. She was the first U.S. curator to showcase the work of Asian artists Zhang Peili, Song Dong, Teiji Furuhashi, Feng Mengbo, and Yang Fudong. Her thematic projects have included Video from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto; New Video from China; Anime!; Looking at Music, parts 1-3; Music Video: the Industry and Its Fringes; and Soundings: A Contemporary Score at MoMA. She also organized the Media City Seoul exhibition in 2000. London was the first to integrate the Internet as part of curatorial practice.
London’s book Video/Art, the First Fifty Years will be published by Phaidon in January 2020. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications including ArtForum, Yishu, Leonardo, Art Asia Pacific, Art in America, Modern Painter, and Image Forum.
About Independent Curators International (ICI)
ICI produces exhibitions, events, publications, research and training opportunities for curators and diverse audiences around the world. Established in 1975, ICI is a hub that connects emerging and established curators, artists, and art spaces, forging international networks and generating new forms of collaborations in contemporary art.
Exhibition booking contact
Becky Nahom: becky [at] curatorsintl.org
Press contact
Madeline Yee: madeline [at] curatorsintl.org
