“Traveling Artists in Times of War” is an evening of sound and performance art that asks how artists can, in Howard Zinn’s terms, transcend the madness of the present while assuming their responsibilities as human beings. This program features performances by Keiko Uenishi (Japan/USA) Katherine Liberovskaya (Canada/USA), Hraïr Hratchian (Armenia/Quebec), Gabrielle Couillard, Zazalie Z. (Québec), and Soledad Coyoli (Quebec/Mexico). It is guest curated by Éric Letourneau, and co-presented by GES, Hexagram and the Laboratoire Musiques Cachées (Montréal), the evening proposes performance as a way to reimagine listening, vulnerability, and solidarity in a time of war.
artist bios:
Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist and socio-environmental composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc since 2001. She is known for works that emerge from experiments in restructuring and examining relationships through aural memory and perception within sociological, cultural, and psychological contexts. Her ongoing research project, Partitions: Dividers, Connectors, Gray-zones, Neighbours in Aural Space, explores a “para-sphere” in which auditory stimuli slip across perceptual boundaries, destabilizing relationships, memory, spatial recognition, and time. Her works include Car décalé (légèrement), SOUNDLEAK: TheROOM (Simulation of Neighbours), and a performative interpretation of Christian Marclay’s object score Sixty-Four Bells and a Bow. She co-created, with Katherine Liberovskaya, the install-action project LandFilles. The feedback unit Emí no Izu was initiated by Darryl Montgomery Hell with Uenishi in 2021. She is developing a new collaboration with sculptor Manon Wada, debuting in 2026. Uenishi’s work has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, Dia:Beacon, Lincoln Center, Eyebeam, Skolska28, Museu de Serralves, ICA London, Tate Britain, and Taipei Artist Village. Her collaborators include Ricardo Arias, Klaus Filip, Miguel Frasconi, Richard Garet, HC Gilje, Darryl Montgomery Hell, Toshio Kajiwara, Takehisa Kosugi, Katherine Liberovskaya, Christian Marclay, Kaffe Matthews, Ikue Mori, Kurt Ralske, and Manon Wada.
Soledad Coyoli is a singer and composer who grew up surrounded by the surrealist paintings of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, her grandmother’s sculptures, the figures of La Malinche and La Llorona, the spare parts of her uncle’s robots, and the sacred music her father listened to. Her sound work draws inspiration from the tradition of Mexican song and explores encounters between different voices, languages, cultures, and technologies, as well as Náhuatl identity roots (her name means “little bell” in Náhuatl). Her music, recipient of the UNESCO-Aschberg award in 2014, has been presented in some of Mexico’s most important cultural institutions, such as the MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art), the Franz Mayer Museum, and the Digital Culture Center in Mexico City. Since arriving in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, her work has taken a new direction: the voice and the body as unique, singular, and unrepeatable territories, but also as fluid, mysterious, mutable, and collaborative materials. Soledad explores hybrid musical and bodily territories in search of a root—an identity—a nepantla, a Náhuatl word meaning “the land in between,” which she can call “home.”
Katherine Liberovskaya is a Canadian intermedia artist based in New York. Involved in experimental video since the 1980s, she has produced numerous single-channel video works, video installations, video performances, and creations in other media, presented worldwide. Since 2001, her work has focused primarily on the intersection of moving image and sound/music, in various ephemeral or fixed forms (projections, installations, performances). She collaborates with numerous composers and sound artists in improvised concerts combining video and sound, where her live visuals aim to create a kind of “music” for the eyes. For over 22 years, she has collaborated on numerous projects with her partner, composer and intermedia artist Phill Niblock, around live performances, videos, and installations. Other regular collaborators include Keiko Uenishi, Laura Ortman, Shelley Hirsch, Katie Porter, Dafna Naphtali, Barbara Held, Mia Zabelka, Al Margolis (IF, BWANA), David Watson, among many others. In addition to her artistic practice, she is also a curator of events dedicated to experimental video/film, music/sound, and audiovisual performance. Since 2005, she has organized the annual Screen Compositions evenings at Experimental Intermedia (EI) in New York, and since 2006, the OptoSonic Tea salons—initially in New York, then in various nomadic venues across North America and Europe, as well as online during the Covid pandemic. In 2014, she completed a practice-based doctorate entitled Improvisatory Live Visuals: Playing Images Like a Musical Instrument at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She is currently the Artistic Director of Experimental Intermedia NYC.
Hraïr Hratchian has pursued work that intersects music, performance art, and experimental film since 1995. A founding member of the Montreal rock band De la Caucase (1998–2008), he served as both singer and duduk player, and with the group produced the album La mort cruelle de Marcel Léart. He also founded the group La Désunion (2010–2013), known for its sound improvisations. As a guest duduk player, he collaborated with the German group Einstürzende Neubauten on the piece Armenia during concerts in 2004, 2005, and 2011. He has also participated in various projects and tours with Sam Shalabi, the Canadian group Esmerine, and Jerusalem In My Heart. Since 2014, he has been performing live and creating experimental films in Canada, the United States, and abroad.
Gabrielle Couillard earned a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Studies at UQAM and explored the world of live performance, both in sound and production, with a particular interest in designing soundscapes that evoke spaces and memorable emotions. She is currently pursuing a research-creation master’s in experimental media, weaving together various creative experiences and audio techniques—including poetry, field recording, and chain sound transformations—to create small, abstract sonic universes. She is especially interested in issues related to sound spatialization and immersivity, from both a technical and creative perspective. She explores the relationship between the body and space through sound, drawing from her own experience of living with a disability (Dispositif Espace-Corps, UQAM, 2022–2023). Since 2019, she has incorporated telematic sound improvisation into her practice, collaborating with artists from Colombia (Festival internacional de la imagen, 2020 and 2021), Toronto (Exit Points series, produced by Michael Palumbo), and Montreal (including the Live Drone series with Kasey Pocius, a weekly webcast that ran for a year during the pandemic).
Zazalie Zaz (Nathalie Dion) has been actively participating in cultural life for 40 years. She manipulates image, sound, and words through voice, video, music, poetry, web art, and printmaking, remaining active across all spheres of creation—both in contemporary and experimental music and in visual and media arts. A grant recipient from the Quebec and Canada Arts Councils and the SOCAN Grant in Toronto, she presents her musical and video works as a singer and performer at various festivals and artist-run centers, both in Canada and abroad. Her works Viva Voce Viva Voz!, Sacred Spirit, and Zig Zag Z. have been shown in Spain at the TEA Contemporary Art Museum (Tenerife), Festival Espacio Enter (Tenerife, Canary Islands), Festival Digital Media and Festival Observatori (Valencia), and LEM Festival (Barcelona). In Italy, her works have appeared at Festival Interazioni (Cagliari, Sardinia). In Canada, she has performed at Naisa Sound Play Festival (Toronto), LABO (Toronto), Factory Art Media Center (Hamilton), Centre d’Artiste Vaste & Vague (Carleton), FIMU (Trois-Rivières), SHARE at Easter Bloc, Festival HTMLLES, and Festival Voix D’Amériques (Montreal). She collaborates as a singer on the Yodel in Hi Fi project, produced by Darren Copeland and Bart Plantenga, broadcast on Radio Naisa (Toronto) and Radio Wave Farm in Acra (New York), during the Deep Wireless Festival in Toronto, and included on the compilation album Yodel OH No Yo! Wreck This Mess (Amsterdam). As a writer and performer, she has been part of the musical groups Nitroglycérine and Pois Z’ont Rouges, touring in various festivals, including Festival de l’Humour (Brussels, Belgium), Montréal Musiques Actuelles, and the Festival de Musiciennes Innovatrices.