[The Ground: A Brief Introduction]

The Ground brings the knowledge developed by Tarek Atoui over six years of research on practices of architecture, traditional music and agriculture in the Pearl River Delta in China, that inspired him ideas on how to work with rhythm, improvisation and space, together with the experimentations of instrument-makers and musicians, in the form of performances, compositions and listening spaces.

 

[Artist’s Statement]

The Ground is a composition which takes inspiration from the long-term observations of human practices within the farming and agricultural context of the Pearl River Delta.

Like the cycles of soil that recovers from fertilizer, The Ground has no beginning and no end.

Its pulses and rhythms are the Mirrored Gardens’ traditional brick walls. Its timbers and textures are its piles of rocks and the aggregates that form these rocks.

Its sound libraries and samples are compost. Some were cut and collected over years, others are unused footage and recordings from past projects.

Its instruments are the swamps, the stones, and the wood of this place. Flutes share air the way ponds do with water, analogue pedals and electronic software filter and distribute sound the way farming spiral structures support plants.

Its space is the neighborhood’s fish ponds and their invisible connections. And like an aging tree in the bottom of a river, it is a space to invite musicians and artists to use it as a record, a bow, an orchestra. A studio, a garden or a temporary place to cultivate sound.

— Tarek Atoui

 

[Research Background]

 

Sketch by Tarek Atoui during the research process in the Pearl River Delta.

 

Combining visual, tactile and aural modes of perceiving sound, The Ground is a variable sonic space, the result of six years of travel the artist undertook in the Pearl River Delta. During this time, Atoui recorded his observations of contemporary and traditional agricultural, architectural and musical practices from the region in a booklet that he then shared with craftsmen and instrument-makers to respond to. The resulting instruments were set up by Atoui to play separately and autonomously at exhibitions first in Guangzhou and later in Singapore, where various artists and musicians were invited to respond to both the forms and sounds of the work.

The Ground presents to us an open system for sound creation that has a nonetheless intricate and compound spatial and compositional structure. It consists of a series of instruments specially constructed (transformed through observations) for The Ground, its own sound playing system (which provides an everyday sound situation and different modes of musical performance) as well as an exercisable, conversational and experimental space/sound structure for musicians, artists, listeners and practitioners intended for continual explorations of possibilities for growing.

 

[Evolution of The Ground]

Tarek Atoui: The Ground, presented at Mirrored Gardens from September to December 2017.

 

The Ground debuted with an exhibition and a series of performances at Mirrored Gardens in the fall of 2017.
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The Ground: From the Land to the Sea, presented at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore from March to June 2018.

 

It continued with a series of performances and an exhibition titled The Ground: From the Land to the Sea that took place at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2018.

 

Installation views of The Ground, presented at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.

 

In 2018 and 2019, the piece was set up as part of Composing/Public/Space, Tarek Atoui’s research platform at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. At the Venice Biennale 2019, The Ground was then presented as a composition and listening space, where Atoui finalized the composition for The Ground based on the accumulations of previous iterations of the project, while performances were organized during the Biennale and later that year during The Ground sessions at the Palazzo Grassi & Teatrino Palazzo Grassi. The same composition and listening space has since been presented in a different configuration in Tarek Atoui’s exhibition Cycles in 11, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, U.A.E., in 2020 and at the inaugural exhibition of the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce in Paris, France, in 2021.

 

[ About the Artist ] >>

 

 

 

“Tarek Atoui: The Ground ”, exhibition views at the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2019.
Photographer: Wen Peng.
Courtesy of the Artist and Vitamin Creative Space. © Vitamin, 2019.
All works of art by Tarek Atoui ©the Artist, 2019.