WESTERN FRONT – Co-Motion Single Field Instrument

Western Front is pleased to present Nour Mobarak’s performance Co-Motion Single Field Instrument at Libby Leshgold Gallery.

Nour Mobarak is an artist working in performance, sound installation, and sculpture to create inter-sensory systems that reframe how we perceive the body and voice in space. In Co-Motion Single Field Instrument, Mobarak turns the gallery into a room-sized instrument by using a real-time tracking system designed and conceptualized by the artist, and digitally programmed by Alex Iglizian, to trigger sounds, samples, and audio and lighting effects, as she moves across colour-coded marks on the floor.

Across the sixty-minute duration of her two performances, Mobarak will improvise and interact with different modes of sound synthesis, to explore the shifting reactions to her location and how the system becomes an uncanny collaborator—with the sounds triggered affecting Mobarak’s movement and live vocalizations, which in turn affects the sound.

Alongside Mobarak’s own vocalizations, the work also layers in many other voices drawn from a large sound bank of samples that she’s compiled. These include recordings of some of the most phonemically complex languages, such as Taa, Abkhaz, San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino, and Silbo Gomero—each one reflecting a much wider sonic palette than languages like English.

Curated by Aki Onda.

Nour Mobarak walks across a gallery floor with her eyes closed and arms outstretched behind her. She wears a glowing choker, a sheer, long-sleeved beige crop top, a black X-shaped brace across her chest, iridescent pants, and sneakers. Lines of neon green and pink tape demarcate the performance space, and audience members sit on the periphery against the gallery wall. The back wall of the space is architecturally distinct, as it features a row of windows below dramatic angular recesses.

About the Artist

Nour Mobarak is a Lebanese-American artist based in Los Angeles, United States and Athens, Greece. Working across sound, performance, video, sculpture, and writing, her practice reflects a longstanding interest in mechanized voice, memory, violence and desire, and the hybridized body under geopolitical conditions.

Accessibility

Libby Leshgold Gallery is located within Emily Carr University of Art + Design on Great Northern Way. Details about accessibility on campus can be found here.

Acknowledgements

Presented in partnership with Libby Leshgold Gallery with support from the Government of Canada. Co-Motion Single Field Instrument was originally commissioned by Lampo and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, where the project was organized by Andrew Fenchel and Karsten Lund.

Nour Mobarak, Co-Motion Single Field Instrument, photo documentation, Nov 12, 2022. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel. Courtesy of the Renaissance Society and Lampo.

Nour Mobarak, Co-Motion Single Field Instrument, photo documentation, Nov 12, 2022. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel. Courtesy of the Renaissance Society and Lampo.

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.