Calling our bodies to the front, this night of performance subverts power and authority over our form.
No memories available
This year’s What Is festival is a disruption: we’re testing noncompliance and are asking you to join us in practice. Or refuse: the only rule is that there are no rules.
On our third night of What Is: noncompliance, we call our bodies to the practice. Our connection to the body is not a given, this is a reminder of everything we are and are capable of.
- THE PERFORMANCE at 8PM: Aliyah Aziz, joined by her workshop partners, opens the night with a musical piece dedicated to unraveling tape loops that bring memory back to tangibility. Following Aliyah is Qiujiang Levi Lu who uses their own electroacoustic systems to play and extend the body into a transgressive and transhumanist locus. They cultivate discovery and awareness in the queerness, viscerality, indecency and misconduct of our bodies.
- THE ACTIVATION: Artist Husna Farooqui compiles a resource list centred around noncompliance in music to accompany the performances of the night.
ABOUT QIUJIANG LEVI LU
Qiujiang Levi Lu is an experimental musician, media artist, and composer based in the United States. Lu invents electroacoustic instruments that use the human body as a vessel for transhumanist, embodied sound. They extend the body with cyborg-like augmentations, such as an intraoral microphone speaker feedback system, and an amplified laptop instrument, built for visceral intensity and hyperkinetic performance. Lu’s performances unfold as choreographed, ritual-inflected improvisations that bring Chinese lineages into conversation with contemporary noise and embodied technology. Their work moves through themes of body dysmorphia, queerness, and spirituality that draws audiences into a physical kind of listening where sound feels intimate, unstable, and sometimes unsettling.
ABOUT ALIYAH AZIZ
Aliyah Aziz is a multidisciplinary storyteller who uses light to talk about shadows, and sound to physically move them through us. She uses disruption as a tool of resistance, sculpting glitch and static to channel the friction that exists between the surface and the depth of the technology that we engage with. Using custom instruments to conduct the auditory frictions present in our technology, Aliyah harnesses electromagnetic frequencies as rhythmic noise in honor of the sonic ghosts that haunt our machines. She incorporates auditory statics like she is listening to an underlying pulse, a living extension of voice beyond body.
ABOUT HUSNA FAROOQUI
Husna Farooqui is an artist, researcher, and cultural worker based in Tkaronto with work, practice, and past engagements scattered through The Music Gallery, UKAI Projects, re:assemblage collective, and Secret Contact. Guided by her conceptual background in philosophy (MA) and with ties and placeholders in India and the Philippines, the Atlantic Ocean via Bermuda, and Saudi Arabia, she brings the concept and experience of scattering to bear on her expanding practice rooted in sound, live performance, visuals, and installation.
TICKETING & ACCESSIBILITY INFO
REFUND, NO-SHOW, & RUSH LIST POLICY
Sometimes our shows sell out, and that can be a bummer for folks who didn’t get a ticket. We’ve developed a new ticketing policy that applies to advance ticket holders and those wanting tickets to ensure a fair, transparent process for releasing additional tickets to a sold-out show. Please read our full policy here.
TICKETING
Our new ticket type invites you to Pay What You Can Afford (PWYCA) which means that you can choose an appropriate level and where possible, help to offset community members attending at a discounted rate. Levels are decided by you based upon your income and financial flexibility and are not verified at the door.
ACCESSIBILITY INFO
Masking and social distancing is strongly recommended for attendees who are able to and audience members are encouraged to arrive scent-free to the performance.
For additional questions or accessibility needs, please contact: matthew@musicgallery.org.
COVID POLICY
We strongly encourage masking at all times. For our full policy, click here.
SAFER SPACE
We expect all attendees and community members to respect one another, and to respect the work that was created for you to explore. We will not tolerate harm or harmful behaviour of any kind. View our policy here.
