With Womens Work: Audrey Chen

Wednesday, May 5th, at 8pm EST, ISSUE is pleased to stream a new work by musician and 2008 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Audrey Chen. The piece is the final work of the With Womens Work series, commissioning artists to interpret and respond to scores included in Womens Work, a magazine first edited and self-published in 1975 by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood.

Notes from Audrey Chen:

I was drawn to Beth Anderson’s composition initially from her title, VALID FOR LIFE as a metaphor and method for the act of creating vibration, touch, resonance, echo, double and triple articulations to provide proof of life, making sure we’re still alive.

By way of closely amplifying the voice and cello (membrane and strung thing), I plan to create an intimate portrait of how I activate my instruments, invoking a kind of joint resonant body/space transforming itself in a feedback loop of imagination, touch, vibration, sound and aural sensation. My practice is deeply intertwined with this act of invocation, calling upon my physical body to remember beyond the limitations of my own memory, beyond my lifetime into generations past, simultaneously echoing into the present and forwards.

I’d like to thank ISSUE Project Room for providing space (in general and as part of their With Womens Work series) for us all to dream more deeply and give frame to these dreams as pandemic continues to limit our abilities to fully give voice. Also, for me personally to remember again Suzanne Fiol, and how her memory continues to reverberate, ringing out through me and so many others.

Audrey Chen is a 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic. Since then, using the cello, voice and occasional analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised, is completely un-processed and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of an analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language. For nearly two decades, her predominant focus has been her solo work with the cello, voice and electronics, but she has more recently begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument. Aside from her solo concerts, Chen performs currently in duo with Phil Minton; as HISS & VISCERA with modular synth player Richard Scott; as BEAM SPLITTER with trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø; as MOPCUT with Lukas König and Julien Desprez; as trio in SEN RYO NO with modular synth players Tara Transitory and Nguyen Baly; in duo with electronic music artist Kaffe Matthews; as AFTERBURNER for voice/live electronics/light with Doron Sadja; and as VOICE/PROCESS for voice/live digital process with Mexican sound artist Hugo Esquinca. Notable past collaborators include German conceptual artist John Bock and abstract turntablist Maria Chavez. Among her more recent album releases include, "By the Stream" with Phil Minton - Subrosa (Brussels), "Hiss & Viscera" with Richard Scott - Sound Anatomy (Berlin), "Rough Tongue", BEAM SPLITTER'S debut LP - Corvo Records (Berlin) and her solo album "Runt Vigor" - Karl Records (Berlin). Chen has performed across Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada and the USA. Since 2011, she relocated to Berlin, Germany from Baltimore, MD USA and continues to maintain an active international touring schedule.