“I make sonic spaces for the stray.”

I’m considering subjectivity in the context of sound: in relation to my own embodiment as a performer and through that embodiment’s gestural extension into composition; and also my refusal of – or at least ambivalence about -- mastery.

“From interaction with instruments to interaction with objects, and objects as creators/elements of a Foley dreamscape: Foley because of the materiality and tangibility of the object, dreamscape because of the disembodied and physically distanced result. There is a gap between gesture and the realisation of the gesture as sound. There is an articulation of identity that is somehow displaced, and the objects are lost along the way. My instruments are my objects and my objects are my instruments. They are autobiography and are indexical to identity. But my objects are not ‘facing me’, they are always moving away from me.

An object (subject!), taken up and activated with a gesture, becomes ob-jest. Its use in performance becomes ob-jesture (gesture). To jest is to laugh: the laughter that comes with the body’s miscarried attempt to perform the virtuosic act – an attempt that is deeply intentional.”

“…I am mirrored (echoed) through the body’s sonic apprehension … teasing out the sound” … listening “into voiceless dialogue with sonic space, sonic mark making, sonic collection, sonic activation of objects, and drawing as sonified performance.”

Portions of this text are from Andrea Parkins,“Nothing To Be Scared Of,”Grounds for Possible Music: Gender, Voice, Language and Identity. Julia Eckhardt (Ed.). Berlin: Errant Bodies, 2018.

Andrea Parkins is a Berlin-based sound artist, composer, and improviser who engages with interactive electronics as material and process. As a “sound-ist,” during the past two decades she has become known for her pioneering textural/gestural approach on her electronically processed accordion, and investigation of embodiment and chance with an array of sonic materials: including amplified objects and drawing tools, electronic feedback; and acoustic, electric, and custom-built software instruments.

Parkins' projects encompass multi-channel fixed-media works, improvised electroacoustic performances, electronic music composition; and sound for contemporary dance, experimental film and intermedia performance. Her work has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Kunsthall Bergen, Kunsthalle Basel, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, among others. Festival appearances have included NEXT/Bratislava, Cyberfest/St. Petersburg, Akousma/Montreal, and many more.

Parkins’ recent projects include her 2016 performance/installation, Two Rooms, Variation 1, for 40 loudspeakers and Solo Performer, created for the acousmonium at L’Usine C in Montreal; her ambisonic installation, Studio Drawing 27-4-19 for 25 Loudspeakers, presented at the 2020 FRST Mini-Festival of Electroacoustic Music in Visby, Sweden, and her ongoing series of large- scale amplified performance drawings. Previous projects include Two Rooms from the Memory Palace, a generative multi-room fixed-media work, presented at the 2015 New York Electronic Art Festival; and her 8-channel installation, Faulty (Broken Orbit), featured in the US-Australia sound art exhibition, “With Hidden Noise” (2012-2015). Her performance/ installation Austell 1 (2012), at Fragmental Museum, NYC, funneled live sound from the Long Island City rail yards into a reverberant warehouse space, with interventions from a walking bell ringer and Parkins’ processed accordion feedback. Parkins portable audio work was presented at Cyberfest 2011 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in 2010 she was invited by artist Christian Marclay to perform interpretations of his graphic scores at the Whitney Museum’s retrospective festival of Marclay’s work.

Parkins’ recordings are published by Important Records, Confront Recordings, Atavistic, Henceforth Records, Infrequent Seams, and Creative Sources, and her writing is published by Errant Sound. She has been an invited resident artist at Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Elektronmusikstudion-EMS Stockholm, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center (NYC), and by Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde. Parkins holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University where she studied with Martha Rosler. She is currently a PhD candidate in Artistic Research at the Norwegian Academy of Music.

Andrea Parkins
Born: Pittsburgh, USA Lives: Berlin, Germany
Andrea Parkins` website