Artist Aura Satz in conversation with artist/musician Liz Wendelbo
On the occasion of the exhibition Élaine Radigue, artists Aura Satz and Liz Wendelbo (Xeno & Oaklander) discuss their work, alongside Éliane Radigue's influence, Lisa Rovner's film 'Chez Éliane', ventriloquism, notation, ghosts in the machine and more. Aura Satz’s work encompasses film, sound, performance and sculpture. Her work centres on the trope of ventriloquism in order to conceptualise a distributed, expanded and shared notion of voice. Works are made in conversation and use dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has made a body of work centred on various sound technologies in order to explore notation systems, code and encryption, and ways in which these might resist standardisation, generating new soundscapes, and in turn new forms of listening and attending to the other. She has performed, exhibited and screened her work nationally and internationally, including amongst many others, Tate Modern (2012), BFI Southbank (2012), the New York Film Festival (2013), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2014-15), Hayward Gallery (2014-15), Whitechapel Gallery (2016), Sydney Biennale (2016), SFMOMA, San Francisco (2017/18/19), MoMA NY (2020), Sharjah Art Foundation (2020), Kadist San Francisco (2021), Onassis Stegi (2021) and upcoming shows at MOCA Toronto and Sonic Acts (2022). She is currently developing her first feature film centred on the sound of sirens and emergency signals. www.iamanagram.com Liz Wendelbo lives and works in New York. Wendelbo is an artist who works in scent, video and photography. Alongside this she is one half of the minimal electronics music project Xeno & Oaklander. Wendelbo has shown her work at the New Museum, White Columns, Microscope Gallery New York, Agnès B./Galerie du Jour in Paris and What Pipeline in Detroit. Wendelbo explores connections between art, music and fragrance, with an emphasis on synesthesia. In her live performances she uses Eurorack synthesizers to modulate analog video and audio. Labeled as a minimal synth, synth-pop and darkwave act, Xeno & Oaklander is considered to be among the key acts that revive and update the sounds of 70s and 80s' cold wave and minimal electronic bands, combining "crisp analog synths with poetic songwriting and vocals.” Pitchfork critic Larry Fitzmaurice has described the band's cold wave-inspired music as "deadpan D.I.Y. post-punk filtered through brutal drum machines and synth lines so brittle and thin you could practically snap them over your knee." Preferring to use analog gear and no post-processing, the band used monophonic synthesizers during the Topiary era, while Hypnos signalled the reintroduction of polyphonic synthesizers and Wendelbo taking on sole vocal duties.
