Marina Rosenfeld (US)
Residency period: May-July 2024
Born in 1968, Marina Rosenfeld is an American composer, sound artist, and visual artist based in Brooklyn. For over thirty years, her work has explored acoustic architectures and experimental forms of participation in sound performances and installations. She focuses on the staging of sound in specific locations, perception, the (female) body, and the diffusion of voice through a variety of sensory experiences. Her works are known for the complex integration of notation and improvisation as a basis for sculptural interventions in monumental spaces, and for a conceptual approach to the use of loudspeakers and musical forms.
Over the course of her career, Rosenfeld has collaborated with numerous artists and musicians, including Okkyung Lee, Marino Formenti, George Lewis, Christian Marclay, Greg Fox, Eli Keszler, and Ben Vida. She has performed regularly with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and created scores for choreographers Ralph Lemon and Maria Hassabi. Her work has been presented at major music festivals and art institutions and biennales around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Park Avenue Armory in New York, the Fondacion Serralves in Porto, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Whitney Biennial and Performa in New York, and the Montreal and Liverpool biennales.
During a residency at Bell Labs’ Experiments in Art and Technology program in New Jersey, which fosters collaborations between artists and engineers, Rosenfeld conducted experiments using a specialized microphone for three-dimensional acoustic scanning, which enabled her to examine the so-called “null” spaces that exist on the edges of polar diagrams of microphones, depending on their construction and location in a venue. At La Becque, Rosenfeld will continue her research into the temporal, spatial, and socio-sensual disorientations of listening, drawing on the notion of perceptual geography developed by American composer Maryanne Amacher. By exploring moments of tension, cancellation, and dissipation, her residency project, entitled Nulls, will attempt to weave links between these gaps that filter and shape microphone recordings, and paradigms that escape the control and surveillance of the power structures of our time.