Now Hear

Saturday, April 1, 2023, 6-8pm
601Artspace, 88 Eldridge Street

In conjunction with our current exhibition Long ago in a soft light, 601Artspace is delighted to present Now Hear, a performance organized by artist Marie-Noële Guex that brings together Thessia Machado, John Roach and Ranjit Bhatnagar, three artists who work with sounds and self-made instruments. In a world where technology often obscures or renders unnecessary the original physical source of a sound, this collaborative performance seeks to highlight the visual connection of objects to the sounds they make.

We look forward to seeing you, no RSVP's are necessary. Find out more about Long ago in a soft light, featuring the work of Marie-Noële Guex and Christophe Fellay, here.

About the performers:

Ranjit Bhatnagar is a sound artist who works with technology, language, and found materials to create interactive installations and performances. His works include Stone Song, a permanent outdoor installation at Caramoor in New York which plays a never-ending composition responding to weather and erosion; The Tapestry of the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence, a 130 foot long tapestry made from glitched audio from the Voyager Golden Record, exhibited in Dublin and in Shanghai; and Pentametron, creating poetry from conversation on Twitter.

Thessia Machado is a visual/sound artist, instrument builder and performer whose work plumbs the materiality of sound and its effect on our shifting perceptions of space. She creates circumstances in which to mine the matter of her pieces for their innate physical properties and the sonic and visual relationships that can arise from their interactions. Electronics are usually implicated. Machado’s sculptures, drawings and sound installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe, most recently at the Sounds Now Festival in Athens, Greece and Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. She has also widely performed with her handmade and modified instruments in both respectable institutions, and in dilapidated basements and experimental spaces throughout Brooklyn, Berlin, and beyond.

John Roach is a sound artist currently telling stories with immersive sound. Roach has been exploring the perplexing qualities and impacts of sound since the late 90's when he was a grad student at Hunter College. Early on in his MFA, Roach abandoned painting to create dilapidated sound sculptures and installations assembled from whatever he could find. Since then he's been working across media exploring sound through collaborations with musicians, coders, scientists, glassblowers, poets, etc. His installation about bees, Scorched Honey Archive, will be at NARS in Sunset Park, Brooklyn in June. In the US, his work has been exhibited in venues like Parkers Box, Urban Glass, Nars, Flux Factory, and Leslie Heller Workspace. Internationally he has been exhibited at the RMIT Gallery in Melbourne, The Glazenhuis Museum in Belgium, and The Ionion Center for Arts and Culture in Greece.

Image: Courtesy of Marie-Noële Guex