DORON SADJA SOUND LIGHT BODY

S O U N D
L I G H T
B O D Y
DORON SADJA
ABOUT
Doron Sadja is a Brooklyn (USA) and Malmö (Sweden) based artist and electronic
music composer who engages the physicality of sound and light through the
creation of immersive performance and installation works. Equal parts disgust
and empathy, organic and synthetic, D. Sadja’s work excites the psyche with
extremes to create hyper­e motive sonic architecture.
Sadja has published music on 12k, Shinkoyo, ATAK, and A Few Quiet People
Records, and has performed/exhibited work at PS1 MoMa, Miami MOCA, D’amelio
Terras Gallery, Inkonst, Cleveland Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, and Roulette
amongst others. In 2006 Sadja co-founded West Nile, an experimental music
and dance performing arts space in Brooklyn, and in 2002 he founded Shinkoyo,
a collective of artists, musicians, composers, and instrument builders. Sadja
received his BMA from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Technology in Music
and Related Arts) and his MFA at Bard College (Sound Art) where he studied with
Maryanne Amacher, Marina Rosenfeld, and David Behrman.
“Doron Sadja gives life to music which is difficult, powerful, intense and delicate all at the same time.” Touching Extremes
“For Doron Sadja, out of the silence comes sound. And that sound builds into
something magnificent.” Zaptown Magazine
Website:
www.doron.sadja.com
Blog:
www.doronsadja.tumblr.com
SOUND
BREATH HEART SKIN
Album + Book
Commissioned by Issue Project Room (NYC) for their 21
speaker sound system, BREATH HEART SKIN is easily Sadja’s
most ambitious, monolithic work to date. Beginning with an
ear massage of piercingly high frequencies (a recurring motif
throughout the work) Sadja then launches full force into waves
of majestic harmonies and drones. Layering sound upon sound,
texture upon texture, each track grows exponentially in intensity,
culminating in a slow motion explosion of euphoria before fading
back into nothingness. With BREATH HEART SKIN, Sadja flexes
his synthetic muscles, creating a uniquely dynamic atmosphere
that is at once grotesque, abusive, sensual, and uplifting. A
brutally powerful work of electronic beauty.
Taking the form of an artists’ book with a digital download
code, BREATH HEART SKIN is a stunning 20 page full color
publication featuring photographs of cloud formations shot by
the artist from the roof of his Brooklyn apartment. The effect of
natural light has been amplified with dramatic color-saturation
into gorgeous bands of sky, as though layers of dirt are being
lifted from a Renaissance painting. A white rectilinear border
placed over the forms interrupts each of the images while giving
the sensation of holding something powerful in frame, familiar to
Sadja’s music.
“incredible journey in audible bliss” Sound Colour Vibration
Listen to Breath Heart Skin
SOUND
I AM IMMENSELY IN TOUCH WITH MY
EMOTIONS AND MUSIC IS MAGIC TO ME
8.1 Channel Sound and Motorized Speakers
I AM IMMENSELY IN TOUCH WITH MY EMOTIONS AND MUSIC IS
MAGIC TO ME is a multi-channel sound installation utilizing both
motorized and stationary speakers installed in 3 rooms totalling
over 13,000 sq ft with a natural reverberation of 6.5 seconds.
In the center of each of the two main rooms is a motorized
swinging speaker suspended at head height, and a spotlight.
Drawing parallels to theories in psychology about ‘mirroring’
(the behaviour in which one person copies another in social
interactions), the work explores the relationship between music
and emotion.
Watch Video
SOUND
SOUNDCORRIDORS
Multichannel Sound Performance and Festival
SOUNDCORRIDORS is a series of sound events exploring non-traditional interactions
between sound and space. Set in architecturally and acoustically unique spaces, the series
invites sound artists and composers to generate new work to activate the peculiarities
of each performance environment. As the creator, curator, and performer in the series,
I’ve designed SOUNDCORRIDORS both as a piece - exploring my own interest in the
relationship between sound and architecture - and as a medium for other performers
to explore sonically. At the heart of each SOUNDCORRIDORS is a multi-channel sound
system, which I meticulously place throughout each venue to turn the entirety of the
buiding into a singular instrument. A day long event, the audience is invited to wander
freely, choosing their own sonic and spatial narrative.
SOUND
PILLARS OF LIGHT
Work for String Orchestra
Commissioned for the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Pillars of Light was inspired by light
pillars, a natural optical phenomenon in which light is refracted off of ice crystals in the
earth’s atmosphere to create stunning vertical beams of light.
Watch Video
LIGHT
COLOR FIELD IMMERSION
Performance for 2 Projectors, 4.1 Channel Sound, White Blindfolds
Based loosely on Ganzfield experiments (a technique used in parapsychology in the 1970s
as a way of invoking telepathy), Color Field Immersion involves masking the audience
with semi-transparent blindfolds onto which light projections are mapped. Similar to
sensory deprivation, Color Field Immersion provides perceptual deprivation, replacing the
entirety of each audience member’s visual field with washes of color, line, and movement
- often inducing hallucinations as the brain seeks to replace lost stimuli. Combined with
rich, textural soundscapes, Color Field Immersion creates a deeply immersive perceptual
architecture of sound and vision.
LIGHT
SENSATIONS
Live Video (3 Projectors & Reflective Mylar) and 6.1 Channel Sound
SENSATIONS is a 50 minute multimedia performance work composed for three video
projectors and 6.1 channel audio. Refracting each projector through different types
of reflective mylar but each directed at the same screen, the work builds an immersive
multilayed texture of stroboscopic colors, patterns, and sounds.
Watch Video
LIGHT
SMOKE & MIRRORS
Performance
Over the last few years I have been developing a performance practice aimed at creating
fully immersive environments. Embedding the audience in a dark void of smoke, I then
use high intensity light and sound to carve out a new sensory architecture. My palate
of tools includes motorized spinning mirror sculptures, reflective mylar, strobe lights,
swinging lasers, smoke alarms, projectors, and flood lights.
Watch Laser Video
Watch Smoke & Projections Video
BODY
BONGO DORONGO’S MAKE ME
Installation
BONGO DORONGO’S MAKE ME casts a fictional eye into the workshop/studio of my
clownish performance persona, Bongo Dorongo, as he ungracefully investigates the action
of (pro)creation through a performance of objects and makeup. Installation includes
paintings made by applying makeup to my body and then slamming myself against paper
and plexiglass, a sound activated makeup fountain, and an 8 minute video loop of makeup
application and disfiguration.
BODY
CHEERS TO YOU
Performance
CHEERS TO YOU is a performance routine of an alter ego, Ron Donko: professional boxer
and motivational speaker. Overly aggressive, masculine, and sexual, Ron Donko yells
motivational speech over a soundtrack of thunderous applause. Yelling, dancing, beating
himself up, humping the air, and contorting his body and face, Ron Donko’s CHEERS TO
YOU is a confrontational examination of new age power dynamics and the male ego.
BODY
CRYBABY
Video & Bass Amplifier Installation
Part of a series of work revolving around the Jewish folkloric theme of the Golem
(creature brought to life by man from inanimate matter) using my camera as a microscope
to study my facial expressions and cinematic musical tropes to amplify and complicate
emotional feedback. CRYBABY comprises of a 6 minute video loop of a crying face
along to a disembodied crying sound and dramatic percussion soundtrack.
THE SLOWEST KISS
Two Channel Video & Sound Installation
Part of the same series of installation works as CRYBABY, THE SLOWEST KISS is a 12
minute video loop of two images of myself leaning in for a slow motion, grotesque
kiss but never reaching eachother along to an uplifting wagnerian soundtrack of strings,
chorus, piano, and drums.
BODY
PRVTLVS
Video/Performance Collaboration
PRVTLVS is an ongoing collaboration combining narrative film, music video, and performance art in a
continued investigation of intimate behavior and personal ritual. Updating the classic archetype of the
cowboy-clown duo, the pair travel the country in character engaging, performing, and documenting as
they journey through the tourist landmarks, suburban towns, and roadways of America.
Alfi & Waldi.
Performance/Installation Collaboration
Alfi & Waldi is an ongoing collaboration engaging an obsessive fascination in the grotesque, Exploring
issues of bodily and emotional repression, perversion, and sexuality through a childlike naivete - using
video, sound, performance, and installation to simultaneously humorous and repulsive ends.
CV
DOR ON S A DJ A
Born in Los Angeles (USA)
Lives and works in Brooklyn (USA) and Malmö (Sweden)
E DU CA TION
MFA Sound, Bard College, 2011
BMA Technology in Music and Related Arts, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, 2005
U P COMIN G E X H IBITION S & PERFO RMANCES
6/14 Dust (Installation) @ Inter Arts Center, Malmö, Sweden
5/14 Het Kunstweekend Charlois Festival @ Wolfart, Rotterdam, Netherlands
10/14 GAS Festival, Gothenberg, Sweden
11/14 Fylkingen, Stockholm, Sweden
E X HIBITION S
2013 Untitled, Red Bull Music Academy/DFA 12 Year Anniversary, Brooklyn, NY
MAKE ME, Big Law Country Club Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2012 I AM IMMENSELY IN TOUCH WITH MY EMOTIONS AND MUSIC IS MAGIC TO ME,
Fragmental Museum, Long Island City, NY
2011 MARFA, De La Cruz Gallery, Miami, FL
MARFA, Optic Nerve XIII Video Art Festival, Miami MOCA, Miami, FL
Looking Class, Heliopolis Gallery, New York, NY
2010 The Original S(t)in(k), Saint Cecilias Convent, New York, NY
The Slowest Kiss, UBS Gallery, Red Hook, NY
Crybaby, Oakland New and Experimental Media Festival, Oakland, CA
2008 West Nile Style, D’amelio Terras Gallery, New York, NY
R E CE N T P E R F OR MA N CES
2014 Inkonst, Malmö, Sweden
String Theories @ Roulette, New York, NY
Printed Matter, New York, NY
Malmö Art Academy, Malmö, Sweden
2013 Mayhem, Copenhagen, Denmark
NK, Berlin, Germany
Clocktower Gallery, New York, NY
L Magazine Summerscreen, New York, NY
Hachanut Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Sensations @ Roulette, New York, NY
Aki Onda, Raha Raissnia & Doron Sadja @ Emily Harvey Foundation
Private Line, New York, NY
2012 Room For Storms @ East River Park Bandshell, New York, NY
NY Art Book Fair @ MOMA PS1, New York, NY
Boy Toys, ESP TV @ La Sala, New York, NY
The Saddest Thing I Ever Saw, Eyebeam Gallery, New York, NY
2011 Breath, Heart, Skin., Issue Project Room, New York, NY
Residuals, Roulette, New York, NY
Squeeze Me, I’ll Laugh A Lot, LMAK Projects, New York, NY
Ohad Meromi’s Rehearsal Sculpture, Art in General, New York, NY
2010 SCALEXTRIC, Roulette, New York, NY
CV
A W A R DS & COMMIS S IONS
2013 String Theories, String Orchestra of Brooklyn Commission
2011 Issue Project Room Emerging Artist Commission
R E COR DIN G S
2014 BREATH HEART SKIN, Shinkoyo Records
2013 CURSE SILENCE LIKE LIGHT, Self Released
Scary Playgrounds, compilation, Few Quiet People
2012 RESIDUALS, Shinkoyo Records
2009 sotto voce, Shinkoyo Records
Symbol: LandSpaceWaterFaith, Shinkoyo Records
2005 S adjeljko: The Ostrians, Shinkoyo Records
2004 Two point Two, compilation, 12k/Line Records
60 Sound Artists Against the War, compilation, ATAK Records
2003 a piece of string, a sunset, 12k Records
MU S IC F E S TIVA LS CU R AT ED
2013 SOUNDCORRIDORS, Knockdown Center, New York, NY
2012 SOUNDCORRIDORS, Roulette, New York, NY
2011 Easy Not Easy Festival, Roulette, New York, NY
John Cage Musicircus, Roulette, New York, NY
SOUNDCORRIDORS, Superfront Architecture Gallery, New York, NY
2010 Easy Not Easy Festival, Roulette, New York, NY
2009 Circus Jerkus, Roulette, New York, NY
OTH E R
2013 Founded Faded Glory Design, a creative design company
2006 Founded West Nile, a performing arts space for experimental music and dance
2002 Founded Shinkoyo Records, a music label and collective