JULIA HANADI AL ABED (FR, 1977)
Residency period: September-November 2022
juliahanadialabed.blogspot.com
Driven by the desire to create a sound piece focused on plant alchemy, i.e. spagyrics, I met Matthieu Frécon, alchemist and distiller at the Edelweiss distillery in Val de Bagnes. We talked a lot at times and at other times, we didn’t say a word. Because silence is golden in this practice. I observed his working process, his movements, and collected a range of concrete sounds. I also took the time to observe, to substantially investigate potential directions, and began to experiment with simple ways of approaching the score and the writing of the spatialization. My attention remains focused on intrinsic aspects of the life of a plant in its environment, to write them into the very heart of the composition. Wormwood and tarragon, in the Artemisia family, will be the main plants on which the piece will be based. I’ve determined the core axes that will serve as a guide for the score: a range of meteorological events, chromatic and luminous variations, the arrival of foragers… and have begun to collect these phenomena. To touch on spagyrics, I still have to go through stages of transformation, to be patient and autonomous in order to capture fermentation, calcination and distillation processes, and thus to transpose as well as possible this patient, long-term approach in order to accept what is, and to sharpen the vigilance of one’s senses. — Julia Hanadi Al Abed
Julia Hanadi Al Abed first engaged in acousmatic writing and field recording while walking, improvising, and wandering on the Atlantic coast with a recorder in hand. Since then, tracing voices, making use of environmental recordings and recording various sonic bodies have become the essence of her work. Particularly when performing live, she also makes use of both lo- and hi-tech device, and experiments with sonic feedback and a vast array of electrical devices, thereby deploying different facets of an electronic music practice and mapping various paths for the act of listening. After graduating in Electroacoustic Composition from the Bordeaux Conservatory, she currently is an associate artist at the Studio de Création et de Recherche en Informatique et Musiques Expérimentales at the University of Bordeaux, where she deepens her work on the spatial dimensions of sound and her approach to the use of sound devices in installation form.