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Masks are preferred and will be provided.
A scent free policy is in effect.
This will be a relaxed performance.
Zero Input Enclosure Movement (ZIEM) is a multichannel sculptural sound installation created by Winnipeg-based artist AO Roberts that was originally presented in SICKROOM at the University of Manitoba’s Art Gallery in 2022. For this presentation, Roberts will create a second iteration of the work following a residency at What Lab.
The concert will open with an opportunity for audience members to engage with the sounds generated by no-input feedback loops produced by the pipes and small amplifiers that are integrated into the sculptural piece. Following this, guest artists RITUAL PURIFICATION and Sainerine will create an improvised, responsive performance in collaboration with the installation.
ZIEM amplifies unstable systems of feedback and drone within a provisional sculptural structure, engaging the sonic architectures of property, healing, and control, and drawing from Roberts’ research into the 18th-century British land enclosure movement. 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.
Artist Talk with AO Roberts and curator Anju Singh starts at 7:15pm.
This is the first edition of Anju Singh’s new series ARTIFACTS, a presentation series of sound architectures, installations, and sculptures in timed performance/concert settings. The series centres the works themselves as central performers either standalone or in collaboration with other performers. By moving these works from galleries or installation-only contexts into timed listening spaces, ARTIFACTS fuses visitor and sound contributor experiences.
This event is part of On Curation, a two-year mentorship project led by Vancouver New Music that supports experimental and forward-thinking approaches to sound and music curation. Mentors have been paired with emerging Canadian curators with a focus on deep, one-on-one exchanges that explore new models of curatorial practice to generate accessible and socially engaged programming.
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).
RITUAL PURIFICATION is a nêhiyaw and Denesuline noise, drone, and experimental sound artist from Treaty 6 territory and based in Vancouver. His work draws from Indigenous cultural knowledge, protocols, and sound worlds, as well as ritual practices, mythologies, and field recordings sourced from across the globe. Both his live performances and recordings are self-contained rituals that incorporate a punishing array of noise-generating devices, sound sources, pedals, field recordings, and efx that are transmuted and transformed into deep melodic drones, crushing waves of harsh noise, fragments of lost melodies, and echoing rhythmic ambience. RITUAL PURIFICATION offers a potent, immersive and embodied experience of conjured spirit, ritual noise, and hypersaturated sound.
He is currently based on the unceded and occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people.
Since 2023, he has released more than a dozen albums with labels including Bent Window, Black Artifact, PRESSOR, Drama Recorder, BISAD, Communal Deafness, Venalism, Outsider Industries, Enforced Existence, 1tracktape, and others. He has performed at End Tymes (NY), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), Vancouver Noise Fest, Teflon Spine, and Low Indigo; and he is one half of the experimental duo Oracle Chamber and the electronic duo CHXMERAS.
Katherine Hillson’s “Sainerine” invokes the operatic archetype of the fallen woman through vocal and experimental electronics performance. She reflects on her years of classical training to find the through lines between traditional operatic narratives, practices of body modification, and as musicologist Susan McClary says, "19th century opera's demand for blood sacrifice".
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.
