Musical memory

Did you know that a 500-millisecond music fragment is enough to trigger a person’s memory? In the brain, music is etched more deeply than an oft repeated fact. That’s why, when we accidentally hear music from even our most distant past, feelings of familiarity arise, and memories resurface. Musical memory is powerful and precise. It manages to capture details as specific as tempo and exact pitch (1).

Sensations from sounds

Tarek Atoui (born in 1980) is a French-Lebanese artist who creates sound. No, not exactly a musician. Rather an artist who finds objects (ready-mades?) that symbolize stories and produce sound. A kind of double memory.

Ubiquity of the artist

Atoui seems to have the gift of ubiquity. Through May 18, he was the subject of an exhibition in Madrid initiated by TBA 21, the art foundation established by Francesca Thyssen at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Through July 20, his work is also on display in Milan at the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca under the title “Improvisation in Ten Days.” During my recent travels—to the Serralves Foundation in Porto, to Marrakech during the 1-54 fair, to Art Basel Hong Kong—I kept hearing that the artist was performing there too. Indeed, I often run into him at airports. So, I decided to visit him in his Paris studio to better understand his work.

Fervor

In the studio

He is, by nature, an artist of the in-between, a contemporary artist at the crossroads of music and visual arts, also at the junction of the conceptual and of popular tradition.

He speaks softly but with great fervor about his discovery of indigenous music and about his homage to traditional rural music from the Arab world, which he organized in Madrid.

Pirated Music

“I was struck by how well it had been preserved compared to classical music. When I travel, I go to music merchants and find these pirated recordings or CDs with no covers that bus and taxi drivers listen to. Music without a market… I’ve traveled a lot in Morocco and then the Emirates. But my role is not that of an ethnomusicologist. I don’t capture this music. I exchange recordings with them.

In Ouarzazate

“For example, I went to Ouarzazate [a city in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains] and knocked on the doors of musicians. They often have other jobs, like instrument makers, jewelers, potters. I discover their official work, and later in the conversation, I can say: ‘Let’s make pottery together.’ When I got back, I worked on those sounds with other musicians—about twenty of them from all over the world.

 Remixed

I remixed. As for the objects in the installations, like the ones in Madrid, they have a specific power. They’re made without electricity. You have to walk for kilometers to find water. So yes, in a way, I believe in the power of objects. This fishing net refers to a reality from 500 million years ago when the Atlas Mountains were an ocean. There are also these suspended elements that I use as sound processors. Would you like to listen to a track?”

Through July 20: Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy

https://pirellihangarbicocca.org/en/exhibition/tarek-atoui/

May 21-23: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Bozar Hall Horta, Brussels, Belgium

(1) As confirmed by Barbara Tillmann, cognitive neuroscience researcher and research director at CNRS in the Laboratory for the Study and Learning of Development in Dijon. Source: France Culture.