Tarek Atoui: The Rain at Mirrored Gardens, 2024. 11 min 57 sec. ©The Pavilion, 2024. Courtesy of The Pavilion.

 

About The Rain

Inspired by Korean drum-making traditions as well as the thinking that lies behind the craft of ceramics and paper, The Rain, initiated by Tarek Atoui in 2019, explores the multiple ways of sound-making through the four elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Wind, a process leading to the experimentation of compositions that transform the cycle of energy into new instruments, performances, and workshops, stimulating different listening experiences and learning processes.

 

Tarek Atoui On The Rain at Mirrored Gardens

The Rain at Mirrored Gardens is a composition in four sections. Each section is in one part of the space.

Every time you enter one of these spaces you will hear something different. There is no loop, there is no beginning and end in the sense of a musical composition or structure that starts and ends. There’s a cycle that is always transforming, and a relationship between instruments that is always changing. 

In the way we speak about some instruments, music, percussion in East Asia, there’s a very strong relation to the four elements: Water, Wind, Fire, and Earth. On this piece, it was an homage to these four elements, where the idea was to have the four elements lay the ground. 

For example, in some of these spaces the water drop is controlling and playing all the rest of the instruments. In other drums, you have wind being blown into them, drums that work with wind and that are activated by air flowing inside of them. Other drums react to heat: there are heating systems where the temperature changes inside the space and on the skin of the drum, and the skin dilates, changes tension, changes structure, changes size and you can hear the impact of the heat on those. And when it comes to earth and to tellurian forces, for me it’s about vibration, it’s about elements vibrating, shaking: with sound being the vibration itself, it is this material, very grounded feeling that you get in this space when sound becomes physical. Something that you feel in your body and not just with your ears. And when you set something that you also sometimes see with your eyes and understand from seeing.  

The four elements here play a fundamental role, they are the performers, and they are I would say at the forefront of bringing this piece to life and making it come together.

 

-Tarek Atoui

 

Section 1

The Composition starts with the biggest space. In that big, echoey room, we have a water drop, a simple water drop that is falling in a Water Drum, and that is controlling the rest of the instruments and playing the whole composition, where each drop is counted and triggers or plays one of the instruments, and they all respond to this drop.                   

 

Tarek Atoui: The Rain (Section 1), 8 min 37 sec. ©The Pavilion, 2024. Courtesy of The Pavilion.

 

Section 2

In the second space, it is a String Drum, an instrument that is a drum made of strings, and where a bamboo branch is softly and gently plucking the strings, and each time the string is hit in a way that is noticeable the other instruments respond.

 

Tarek Atoui: The Rain (Section 2), 6 min 26 sec. ©The Pavilion, 2024. Courtesy of The Pavilion.

 

Section 3

In the third space, it’s more like an organic relationship between different instruments. The chain reaction where one action triggers other actions and where the result is always changing because of the randomness or the organicity that is embedded inside some of the instruments. Like for example the drum that is in blue and that is rotating, and which sound is kind of playing the role of a starter to which the gongs and the bells respond, to which drums that work with wind respond, and where the rest of that space is acoustically active from these elements rotating, with the Blue Drum, as I said, but also with the other drum kit that is vibrating and playing bass sound inside the space, and shaking the rest of the instruments.         

 

Tarek Atoui: The Rain (Section 3), 9 min 10 sec. ©The Pavilion, 2024. Courtesy of The Pavilion.

 

Section 4

And the last, smallest space, it is a more organic reaction that is happening with echoes and resonances inside the drums, where the big drum skins are producing big sound waves, bass waves that are also putting in motion the rest of the instruments and playing them together.                     

We also see a series of Talking Drums in different sections, drums that stand on vibration speakers and through which sound plays, and you hear the sound through the acoustic of the drum. But these Talking Drums on the composition at Mirrored Gardens became like storytellers, they are the memory keepers of each space. In every space there is a Talking Drum that is listening and recording all the other instruments and then playing back the sound of this space at different speeds, at different pitches, in different ways, where it’s like a storyteller. In a way for me they are like the gatekeepers or like the strongholds of every space: the memory, the twisted memory, the oral memory that is every time proposing something new, and something different because what they record is changing every time somehow. 

 

-Tarek Atoui

 

Tarek Atoui: The Rain (Section 4), 6 min 06 sec. ©The Pavilion, 2024. Courtesy of The Pavilion.

 

——————

The Rain is part of a series of long-term research projects undertaken by Tarek Atoui: WITHIN (2013-ongoing), The Reverse Collection (2014-2021), The Ground (2015-ongoing), Waters’ Witness (2020-ongoing) and The Whisperers (2021-ongoing).

The Rain has been developed with the support and participation of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, where it was presented as part of GB Commissions during the 13th Gwangju Biennale in 2021, and in the form of an installation, a performance and a series of workshops for the 14th Gwangju Biennale in 2023; and of Art Sonje Center where the exhibition, series of performances and workshops Tarek Atoui: The Rain took place in 2023-24.

 

[About the Artist]  >>

 

[Reflection]

 

A voice within
A quivering
Triggers the quaking of internal cosmos
Shatters some prejudices
Amid the shockwaves, it echoes
A boat on a river
A spring in the mountains
Washed out
A sturdy embankment
The structure of the earth

Kindess
The flow of energy in the body
As kindess follows kindness
Kindness
As breath preserves life

This leads us return to the source of sound
The source of the river
Imagine
At the dawn of astronomy
Sounding was both a tribute to nature
And a portent of human life

 

—Excerpts from Hu Fang: Sound Without A Home

 

“Tarek Atoui: The Rain”, installation view at Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2024.
Photographer: Wen Peng.
Courtesy of the Artist and Vitamin Creative Space. © Vitamin, 2024.
All works of art ©the Artist, 2024.

 

 

Vitamin Creative Space

Tarek Atoui: The Rain

Venue
Mirrored Gardens, Space 1, Space 2

Address
Hualong Agriculture Grand View Garden, Panyu, Guangzhou

Daily Opening Hours
Wednesday to Sunday, 1 to 5pm  (closed on Monday and Tuesday)
Hours may vary on holidays or in special circumstances. Please check our WeChat Public Account or website for the latest updates.

Please make an appointment to visit the exhibition via the official website of Mirrored Gardens.

Website: mirroredgardens.art
WeChat: mirroredgardens
Tel: +86 20-31043759
Mirrored Gardens email contact: mail@mirroredgardens.art
Press: PR@vitamincreativespace.com