TAREK ATOUI

‘The Whisperers’ conceived by Tarek Atoui’s, is a series of listening devices composed of different materials that conduct and amplify sound in multi-sensory ways. These assemblages bring together plastic, wood, brass, water, bronze, glass and stone, experimenting with each material acoustic properties and the unique ways they transmit and reflect sound. Through The Whisperers, Atoui invites the visitor to plug-in their own music and experience it in fresh and innovative ways, they offer a medium for discovery and unpredictable, undoing the familiar and known.

Between October 2020 and January 2021, a first set of ‘The Whisperers’ was created for the trust & confusion exhibition curated by Raimundas Malasauskas at the Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong-Kong. For his exhibition at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Atoui has created a new series of ‘The Whisperers’ influenced and inspired by five workshop sessions that took place between November 2020 and June 2021 in a kindergarten classroom, l’École alsacienne in Paris, with 5-year-old students.

An interview between Tarek Atoui and Audrey Belmin, teacher at l’École alsacienne, recounting the experience of transmission within a kindergarten classroom, and observations on sound realised during workshop sessions is available here.

Tarek Atoui is an artist and electroacoustic composer, working within the realm of sound performance and composition. He engineers complex and inventive instruments as well as arranges and curates interventions, concerts, performances, and workshops. His work often revolves around large-scale, collaborative performances that develop from extensive research into music history and instrumentation, while exploring new methods of production. Using custom-built electronic instruments and computers, Atoui references current social and political realities, revealing music and new technologies as powerful aspects of expression and identity. Education and social connection are integral aspects of Atoui’s practice.