Alexander Garsden is a composer, guitarist and electroacoustic musician, working across multiple exploratory musical disciplines. He is based in regional Victoria, near Naarm (Melbourne), Australia.

His notated music has been commissioned by Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Speak Percussion, Michael Kieran Harvey, and Jessica Aszodi, amongst others. His research and compositional output primarily relates to novel approaches to frequency, inharmonicity, and extended just intonation.

His recorded collaborations include with Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan), Ida Duelund Hansen (Denmark), Julia Reidy, and David Stackenäs (Sweden). He has performed with Oren Ambarchi, Natasha Anderson, Ned Collette, Jim Denley, Rohan Drape, Golden Fur, Grand Salvo, Radu Malfatti (Austria), Kim Myhr (Norway), Francis Plagne, Joe Talia, Lizzy Welsh, Erkki Veltheim, and Yuko Kono.

From 2014 to 2019 Alexander was co-director of the INLAND Concert Series, which held over 50 concerts across Australia, showcasing artists whose work spans notated, improvised, electroacoustic, popular and interdisciplinary practices.

Alexander teaches various music theory subjects through the University of Melbourne, and has previously taught at RMIT.

Alexander Garsden is a composer, guitarist and electroacoustic musician, working across multiple exploratory musical disciplines. He is based in regional Victoria, near Naarm (Melbourne), Australia.

Alexander Garsden

Chi Tran is a writer, editor and an artist, who makes poems that may be text, video, object, sound, or drawing. Chi is primarily interested in working with language as a means of coming-to-terms. Their work has been published by Incendium Radical Library Press, Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry and Liminal Magazine and exhibited at galleries including Firstdraft, Sydney; Punk Café, Melbourne; and ACCA, Melbourne. In 2019, as a recipient of The Ian Potter Cultural Trust Fund, Chi spent three months in New York developing their practice with renowned poets including Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Fred Moten, and Jackie Wang. \* \[website]\(https://www.chi-tran.info)

Chi Tran is a writer, editor and an artist, who makes poems that may be text, video, object, sound, or drawing. Chi is primarily interested in working with language as a means of coming-to-terms. 

Chi Tran

LISTENING IS CREPUSCULAR. MUSIC IS A SHADOW.

MORGUE OARS LISTENING IS CREPUSCULAR. MUSIC IS A SHADOW. (The anemone and glow-worm help me to unconsciousness) In listening to music, we can speak of perspective as the conscious foregrounding and projecting of specific objects and events. We can also speak of an inversion of perspective by focusing on that which might initially be ‘backgrounded’ in listening (a constant aim of music analysis and psychoacoustics). But this is still just a projection of listening, a desiring-listening. Is it possible to listen without any foreground?  Would this involve something like ‘backgrounding’ consciousness? (Hiddenness is something intentional but also something we are thrown into, refusing to bend to our will) Music itself is saturated by noise (a whiteness, not necessarily physical noise, partly the noise of listening?) but how do we hear its intensity? What is its aesthetic blackness? (“darkness makes sight concentrate to such a degree that besides pain it sometimes brings blindness to the eye if it lasts too long … \[d]arkness is not the pure state of privation but is of visible nature deriving from the conjunction of the privative and positive entities”) (Is a crepuscular listening that which is emerging or receding in consciousness?) The image of musical shadow can be used to unpack a notion of aesthetic ‘darkening’ and reduction in the treatment of compositional materiality, process, and perspective (in both performer and the listener). Chiaroscuro paintings by Adam de Coster, and the use of Claude Glass mirror in 18th century landscape painting techniques, can provide a conceptual camera obscura in which Black Metal is viewed through Wandelweiser aesthetics. James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer. His work is drawn from a familiarity with specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages. Currently, his work deals with the aesthetic concept of musical shadow. As a composer, James has been commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Glasgow), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Neon (Oslo), Speak Percussion (Melbourne), Ensemble Vortex (Geneva), Ensemble Offspring (Sydney), Decibel (Perth), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006/2008), Norway Ultima Festival (2011), Unsound Festival (New York 2014) and Liquid Architecture Festival (2010). As a performer, he has presented work at STEIM Institute (Amsterdam), Logos Foundation (Ghent), Issue Project Room (New York), Instants Chavirés (Montreuil), Constellation (Chicago), Café Oto (London), Super Deluxe (Tokyo), Blank Forms (New York), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Cave12 (Geneva), Send & Receive Festival (Winnipeg), WORM (Rotterdam), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Only Connect Festival (Oslo), Now Now (2011/2012), Adelaide Festival (2014), Melbourne International Jazz Festival (2011) and the Tectonics Festival (Adelaide 2014, New York 2015, Tel Aviv 2015). He has also performed as a soloist with the Krakow Sinfonietta, Australian Art Orchestra, Michel Pisaro, Eyvind King, David Behrman and Jon Rose. James has collaborative projects with Joe Talia, Golden Fur (with Samuel Dunscombe & Judith Hamann), Ora Clementi (with crys cole), Oren Ambarchi, Klaus Lang, Kassel Jaeger, Anthony Pateras, Will Guthrie, Annea Lockwood, Graham Lambkin, Francis Plagne, Tashi Wada, the visual artist Michael Salerno and the writer Dennis Cooper. His music has been published by Pogus (US), Prisma (Norway), Bocian (Poland), Penultimate Press (UK), Another Timbre (UK), Holidays (IT), Black Truffle (AUS) and KYE (US). James holds a Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts, and was a 2018 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. \* \[website]\(http://www.james-rushford.com)

James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer. His work is drawn from a familiarity with specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages. Currently, his work deals with the aesthetic concept of musical shadow.

James Rushford

Aszodi's career could best be described as genre-bounding and label-defying. The Australian-born, London-based vocalist has premiered dozens of new pieces, performed long neglected works, devised pieces, projects and festivals, sung roles from the standard operatic repertoire and collaborated with a constellation of artists from the far reaches of the musical spectrum. Her voice has been praised for its “utmost security and power” (Chicago Tribune) and in her native Australia she was described as “one of the finest actress-singers in the country” (The Age). Recent performance highlights include Berio’s “Folksongs” alongside Tabea Zimmerman and Musikfabrik at Beethoven-Festwoche and in music theatre, Sondheim’s “A little Night Music” for Nederlands Reisopera. In 2019 she was awarded “Performance of the Year” by the Australian Art Music Awards for Liza Lim’s epic “Atlas of the Sky” with Speak Percussion. Her voice has an unusual range, both in terms of colour and pitch, making it possible for her to perform repertoire across genres (from experimental to baroque, folk to opera) and voice types, from contralto (in signature works like Boulez' Le Marteau sans maître) to soprano (like Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil ). She has been a soloist with ensembles as diverse as the Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Pinchgut Opera, the Tirolean Symphony Orchestra, Victorian Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, ICE, and in the chamber series of the San Diego and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Her operatic roles include Eve (Stockhausen’s Dienstag aus Licht), Socrates (Satie’s Socrates), Aminta (Mozart’s Il re pastore), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Sesto (Guilio Cesare), Popova (Walton's The Bear), Rose (Elliot Carter's What Next?) and Echo (Ariadne auf Naxos). Jessica can be heard on recording for Chandos, Ars Publica and Hospital Hill and has sung in festivals around the world, including Klangspuren, Beethoven Festival Bonn, Resonant Bodies, Vivid Sydney, Aspen Music Festival, BIFEM, the Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals, Darmstadt, Aldeburgh, Tectonics and Tanglewood. Aszodi has twice been nominated for the Australian Greenroom Awards as ‘best female operatic performer’ - in both the leading and supporting categories. She holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Queensland Conservatorium, a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California and has written scholarly articles for several books and journals. (Website)\[https://www.jessicaaszodi.com/]

Aszodi's career could best be described as genre-bounding and label-defying. The Australian-born, London-based vocalist has premiered dozens of new pieces, performed long neglected works, devised pieces, projects and festivals, sung roles from the standard operatic repertoire and collaborated with a constellation of artists from the far reaches of the musical spectrum.  Her voice has been praised for its “utmost security and power” (Chicago Tribune) and in her native Australia she was described as “one of the finest actress-singers in the country” (The Age)

Jessica Aszodi

Julie Cunningham

Chess Boughey (LONDON) started dancing at the age of 4 at the Elizabeth Hill School of Dance and Drama in Merseyside and transferred to the Royal Ballet School at the age of 11, where they trained until the age of 16. During their time at White Lodge they were awarded prizes in the Kenneth MacMillan choreography competition and were a semi-finalist in the Young British Dancer of the Year Award 2006. 

They danced with the Royal Ballet on numerous occasions performing at venues such as the Royal Opera House and the Linbury Studio Theatre. At the age of 16 they moved to Elmhurst School for Dance and danced with the National Youth Ballet. They then decided to leave the world of dance in order to start an academic career. During the course of their physics degree at Imperial College London they were the university Dance Company Ballet Director. 

This involved teaching ballet to dancers of varying ability, choreographing and participating in ballet and contemporary dance performances. They are currently studying for a PhD in nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge and joined Cambridge Contemporary Dance as a dancer and teacher in November 2013.

Chess Boughey (LONDON) started dancing at the age of 4 at the Elizabeth Hill School of Dance and Drama in Merseyside and transferred to the Royal Ballet School at the age of 11, where they trained until the age of 16. During their time at White Lodge they were awarded prizes in the Kenneth MacMillan choreography competition and were a semi-finalist in the Young British Dancer of the Year Award 2006.

Chess Boughey

Arben Dzika is an artist, whose practice involves working with various media – including, but not limited to, sound, image, word, and performance. His work primarily seeks to reflect on, interrogate, and play, with technologies, systems, and human senses. Within his practice, he works as a producer and DJ under the moniker, Dilae.

Arben Dzika

Freya Schack-Arnott (DK/AUS) is a contemporary cellist and nyckelharpist who enjoys a multi-faceted career as a performer, improviser, composer and curator; ranging from contemporary classical repertoire to experimental, electronics, folk and popular art forms

Freya Schack-Arnott

Haroon Mirza has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. He devises sculptures, performances and immersive installations, such as The National Apavillion of Then and Now (2011) – an anechoic chamber with a circle of light that grows brighter in response to increasing drone, and completely dark when there is silence, or the Dyson Sphere (2022) – an earthbound version of a hypothetical, off-world megastructure in which a sun-like central tungsten light powers a carapace of photovoltaic panels. An advocate of interference (in the sense of electro-acoustic or radio disruption), he creates situations that purposefully cross wires. He describes his role as a composer, manipulating electricity, a live, invisible and volatile phenomenon, to make it dance to a different tune and calling on instruments as varied as household electronics, vinyl and turntables, LEDs, furniture, video footage and existing artworks to behave differently. Processes are left exposed and sounds occupy space in an unruly way, testing codes of conduct and charging the atmosphere. Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms. "All music is organised sound or organised noise," he says. "So as long as you’re organising acoustic material, it’s just the perception and the context that defines it as music or noise or sound or just a nuisance" (2013).

Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms. "All music is organised sound or organised noise," he says. "So as long as you’re organising acoustic material, it’s just the perception and the context that defines it as music or noise or sound or just a nuisance" (2013).

Haroon Mirza

References to nature, artificial intelligence, psychedelic substances and the healing potential of song.

Liquid Architecture is working in partnership with ACCA and Melbourne Festival to present a live performance and a writers residency as part of the exhibition Haroon Mirza: The Construction of an Act.

Curated by Annika Kristensen, this is the first solo exhibition in Australia by acclaimed London-based artist Haroon Mirza, bringing new commissions into dialogue with re-presentations of recent work to provide a choreographed experience of the artist’s diverse interests and applications across the last decade. Exhibition open 14 Sep–17 Nov 2019.

Haroon Mirza’s extensive and varied art practice – encompassing sculptural assemblage, immersive installation and live performance – has its origin in music; in the rhythm, syncopation and sampling techniques informed by the artist’s experience as a DJ. Mirza likens his methodology to that of a composer, arranging both the aesthetic and acoustic properties of materials and space into new audible, visual and haptic forms. Continuing the analogy of the artist as composer, Haroon Mirza: The Construction of an Act has been conceived as if the gallery was itself an instrument, with the exhibition forming an overall score.

As part of the exhibition a studio has been constructed in the gallery to host a series of weeklong residencies in composition, music and dance, culminating in a live performance. Loosely structured on the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, Mirza has scripted a science fiction narrative – with references to nature, artificial intelligence, psychedelic substances and the healing potential of song – as a provocation for each resident. Through the residencies this script will be transformed into a piece by composer James Rushford; with musicians Jessica Aszodi (soprano), Alexander Garsden (guitar) and Freya Schack-Arnott (cello); and interpreted into movement by choreographer Julie Cunningham, working with dancer Chess Boughey.
On Tuesday 8 October at 6.30pm, and 8.00pm, a live public performance will bring together the outcomes of these three residencies for the first and only time. Haroon Mirza: The Construction of an Act thus opens as a studio and a stage set for action: the nature of which will be revealed in the process of its eventual enacting.

In addition to the performance, from Monday 7 – Friday 11 September, Chi Tran and Arben Dzika will undertake a residency commissioned by Liquid Architecture to produce new writing in response to Mirza’s work, to be published in Disclaimer.

Li(quid)stening
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Haroon Mirza: The Construction of an Act

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Haroon Mirza: The Construction of an Act

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