The Agosto Foundation is pleased to support the residency of Adam Basanta in Prague, including his performance at Wakushoppu at Cafe v lese on 7 June, 2015, as well as a solo exhibition at the Školská 28 Gallery, which will open 9 June, 2015.
Adam Basanta (b. 1985) is a Montreal-based sound artist, composer, and performer of experimental music. His work includes sound installations, experimental electronic and chamber music composition, site-specific interventions, and laptop performance. Working across disciplines and media, he examines the intersections between conceptual and sensorial dimensions of listening, the materiality of the technological apparatus, and the instabilities of instrumentality.
Basanta’s work looks at perception – listening in particular – as an active, participatory, multi-modal activity distributed across a variety of human and non-human agencies. By interrogating the points of intersection between the conceptual and sensorial, the psychological and psychophysical, as well as the conscious, bodily and mechanical dimensions of the listening experience, he aims to draw the viewer’s awareness towards undiscovered facets of their own listening.
In his recent work, he exclusively uses objects from the world of commercial sound reproduction technologies. Disrupting their technical and economic functions, thus nullifying their potential as instruments of mass communication, these objects are transformed into sculptural sound-producing objects. Through a subtle perversion of these communication technologies, he aims to reveal their material agencies as prosthetic technologies-of-listening, while in turn allowing for a reflection on the material agency of our own bodily “technologies” of listening. Arranging these objects into reconfigured three-dimensional listening situations, he creates spaces for the aesthetic and conceptual contemplation of sound, listening, sound technologies, and the manner in which these elements are in constant interplay.
For his first solo exhibition in Prague at the Skolska 28 Gallery, curated by Miloš Vojtěchovský, Basanta has designed a new work in which he investigates the relationships between movement, space and sound.
Adam Basanta’s artist residency is realized in cooperation with the Školska 28 Gallery.
Adam Basanta’s sound and audiovisual installations have been presented in North America and Europe in galleries and institutions including Carroll/Fletcher Gallery (London), Serralves Museum (POR), Edith-Russ-Haus fur Mediakunst (GER), Vitra Design Museum (GER), Laboral (ESP), Gallery B-312 (Montreal), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Titanik Gallery (FIN), and The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA), and have been awarded in the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 and the 2014 Edith-Russ-Haus Awards for Emerging Media Artists. His experimental concert music has been presented worldwide, including appearances in the MATA Festival (NY), Gaudeamus Musicweek (NL), CTM Festival (GER), Akousma Festival (CAN), and Mutek Festival (CAN), and have been awarded multiple national and international prizes, including Metamorphoses 2010 (Belgium) and the Grand Prize in the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers (Canada). Recently, his music has been released on Kohlenstoff Records (Montreal), Cassauna (USA), and Farmacia901 (Italy).
Basanta holds a BFA in composition from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC) and an interdisciplinary MA in composition and sound art installation at Concordia University (Montreal, QC).
