Duration
2.12.23, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Language
English
Admission
Free admission
Info
In December, TUNE presents Nivhek with an installation in the auditorium, an artist talk and two live performances. The performances will be accompanied by a film by Takashi Makino.
Friday 1.12.23
8 pm | Nivhek. Engine (live) with a film by Takashi Makino
Saturday 2.12.23
6 pm | Artist talk with Nivhek
8 pm | Nivhek. Engine (live) with film by Takashi Makino
3.—19.12.23
Nivhek. Engine. Installation
Recording and performing under both Nivhek and Grouper, Liz Harris starts with small sounds that reverberate into ever-expanding spaces and take on a character that is both unnerving and transcendent. She debuted the Nivhek project in 2019 with After Its Own Death / Walking In A Spiral Towards The House. The genesis of that project was an Arctic residency, where she experienced isolation in endless daylight, surrounded by abandoned buildings being absorbed by nature itself.
Natural landscapes and especially water hold a primary importance for Harris. But in Engine, she starts from engine noises sourced from drag races and passing trains. It is the sound of fossil fuel excess, overdriven motors blurring into organic rhythms and mimicking heartbeats and breath.
From 3.—19.12.23, Engine by Nivhek can be heard in the auditorium. The work lasts 19 minutes and includes train and car engine noise from drag races at Portland International Raceway/North Portland railway tracks. Engine began inside a decade-long obsession with engine noise. The sound of excess, power, sex, destruction, capitalism, of oil becoming an airborne pollutant, of transformation, of life. Guttural bass and rev a mirror of organic rhythms - mimicking heartbeats, breathing, blood rushing. A spiral ode to symbiotic decay.
Engine was originally commissioned by Roya Amirsoleymani and Felisha Ledesma for Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (2023).
Admission to the Artist Talk is free.