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Pre-show artist chat moderated by Anju Singh
Zero Input Enclosure Movement (ZIEM) is an 8-channel sculptural sound installation (aluminum pipes, C-stands, mixing boards, amplifiers, pedals, speakers) created by Winnipeg-based artist AO Roberts. For this presentation, Roberts will create a second iteration of the work, reimagined specifically for this program.
This installation invites audiences to shift their sonic attention within a timed, spatially responsive environment structured through layered interactions of performance and audience engagement. For the evening event, three artists will collaborate with Roberts and the ZIEM system to develop responsive performances. These interventions are grounded in crip improvisation and collective dynamics. Following the event, the installation remains open for audience interaction, allowing the system’s sonic architecture to continue unfolding.
ZIEM amplifies unstable systems of feedback and drone within a provisional sculptural structure, engaging the sonic architectures of property, healing, and control. Roberts draws from research into the 18th-century British land enclosure movement, reactivating the bandstand—an architectural invention of that period. Using a zero-input mixing technique (where a sound system’s output is fed back into its input), ZIEM produces oscillating drones that echo the immersive tones of a sound bath yet drift into the spectral persistence of MRIs, HVAC systems, and power transformers.
The evening begins with a conversation between AO Roberts, Anju Singh, and invited artists, followed by a facilitated Q&A. A zine documenting Roberts’ process, produced in collaboration with UNIT/PITT, will also be available. Originally presented in SICKROOM at the University of Manitoba’s Art Gallery in 2022, ZIEM will be remounted by Vancouver New Music on February 14, 2026, following a residency at What Lab.
AO Roberts (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist who builds worlds resonating with the unruly sounds of the voice, power, disability, and systems of belief. Based in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg), their work unfolds across sculptural installation, experimental sound, and digital ecosystems. Their projects are spells often cast in collaboration—detuning labor to the subterranean pulses of what our bodies know but cannot prove. As critic Hannah Doucet observes, Roberts forges "unexpected and poetic connections between property, protection, body, care, and control," crafting spaces where sound and matter shed their roles as mere messengers to become thresholds of possibility and contradiction.
Their 2024 release Plants Properties Equipment (PPE), an interactive world developed with Vancouver’s Séance Collective, invites players into a sentient crip landscape, featuring an original soundtrack with contributions from Johanna Hedva, Molly Joyce, Andy Slater, Chisato Minamimura, and Medical Museum. Roberts performs experimental electronics under the alias VOR, whose Ruminant was released by Makade Star in 2022, and is a recent artist-in residence at Dreamsong Gallery (Minneapolis), Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation (Brooklyn), and Oolite Arts (Miami).
Dissecting, interrogating, and experimenting with sound is a core aspect of Anju’s practice as a noise artist, experimental music composer and media artist. Using space, volume and texture as tools, she pushes extreme dynamics to build compositions and immersive sonic experiences.
Anju brings these elements of her artistic practice into her curatorial work - with intentional focus on experimentation and artistic process as primary drivers for presenting works - encouraging artists and audiences to support and prioritize artistic risk in a shared commitment to experimentation.
Anju is Curator and Director of Vancouver Noise Fest (10 editions to date), Co-Curator of Media Arts Committee (MAC)’s sound art residency program since 2011, past Co-Curator of Fake Jazz Wednesdays, and guest curator at select festivals.
Anju has presented and performed her work across Canada, in Europe, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and the United States in underground spaces, art centres, and through venues and arts festivals such as Fylkingen in Stockholm, Sweden; Send + Receive Festival in Winnipeg; Vancouver Jazz Festival; Polygon Gallery; New Forms Festival; Initial Shock Festival; Suoni per il Popolo in Montreal and more.
