As a 2nd generation Taiwanese American (born 1976) living in Berlin, Audrey Chen`s work continuously explores the displacement of story and history due to the migration and integration processes, loss and adoption of language, untold stories, and how the past can be accessed through inherited and lived experience. Her practice is deeply intertwined with this act of invocation, calling upon the physical body to remember beyond the limitations of its own memory. Through extreme, un-processed hyperextensions of her voice in tandem with the chaotic glitch of a Ciat Lonbarde “Fourses” synthesiser, she invokes a highly amplified joint resonant body/space transforming itself in a feedback loop of imagination, touch, vibration, sound and aural sensation. For over two decades, she has been touring extensively, appearing worldwide and aside from her solo concerts, Chen performs currently in her longest running duo project since 2005 with Phil Minton; as BEAM SPLITTER with trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø; as MOPCUT with Lukas Koenig and Julien Desprez with regular guest MC Dälek; with electronic music artist Kaffe Matthews; with American sound artist Nick Klein, in duo for voice/live digital process with Mexican sound artist Hugo Esquinca and in trio with Vietnamese/German and Singaporean artists Nguyễn + Transitory.

She has shown her work at festivals/venues such as: Festival Beyond Innocence (Osaka, JP), Maerzmusik, CTM Festival, Berghain, (Berlin, DE),  Unsound Festival (Krakow, PL), 2PI Festival (Hangzhou, CN), Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville/FIMAV (CA), Festival Ecuatoriano de Música Contemporánea (Quito,Ecuador), Meteo Festival (Mulhouse, FR), Angelica Festival (Bologna, IT), Zacheta National Gallery (Warsaw, PL), Museé du quai Branly, Radio France (Paris, FR), Auditorio de Tenerife (Tenerife, ES), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires, AR), Teatro Fondamenta Nuove (Venice, IT), DOM (Moscow, RU), Wien Modern, Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna, AT), Lille Opera (Lille, FR) and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center (Water Mill, NY, US) among many others.

Writing for The Wire, Julien Cowlez describes her practice as »uncompromising and idiosyncratic music, tightly disciplined yet acoustically wild and heavy with implication. Her ultra-verbal vocalising, often reminiscent of the visceral and emotionally charged sound poetry of François Dufréne or Henri Chopin, exposes physiological aspects of utterance that are concealed within standardised articulation and day to day speech. Fleshy, breath-driven and flecked with spittle, Chen’s voice emanates not just from her mouth but from an ensemble of upper body surfaces, channels, passages, and cavities.«

www.audreychen.com

photo credit: Michael Breyer