Inga Maren Otto Concert

Assembling Bodies

Assembling Bodies is a portrait concert featuring seven works by the Academy’s spring 2020 Inga Maren Otto Fellow in Music Composition, Carolyn Chen. The pieces, composed between 2009 and 2020, include instrumental music, reading, and movement for listening bodies.

Stomachs of Ravens
Our Glass Bodies
This is a Scream

* * *

Tragedy
How to Assemble a
Southern v. Northern Lion
Signs of Struggle

Carolyn Chen is a composer, sound artist, and performance artist based in Los Angeles, California. She was the Spring 2020 Inga Maren Otto Fellow in Music Composition at the American Academy in Berlin. Chen’s work reconfigures everyday sounds in order to reorient listeners’ aural habits, using a blend of sound, text, light, image, and movement. For over a decade, her studies of the guqin, the Chinese seven-string zither traditionally played for private meditation in nature, have informed her thinking on listening in social spaces. Chen places traditional instruments in conversation with everyday objects and recorded sounds, and invites participation in musical games and live installations.

Performers:

Berglind Tómasdottir, Carolyn Chen, Jennifer Torrence, Jessica Aszodi, Michiko Ogawa, Neo Hülcker, Richard Valitutto, Sam Dunscombe, Tal Allweil