An important current running along and across Tarek Atoui’s sound experimentations is collaboration. A great majority of his work involves and evolves through participation of others. These can be designers, builders, musicians, field recordist, listeners. It is often the case that his installations offer themselves as very direct relational platforms as they can be activated by the audiences and other artists. For Waters’ Witness exhibition in Serralves, sound artist Alan Affichard, a group of Portuguese musicians and artists as well as students from art schools, all are invited to interact and dialogue with the works installed. Along with collaborative and educational workshops, performances are organized throughout the entire period of the exhibition and artists able to engage with a diversity of sounds inhabiting the exhibition at different stages, progressing from the winter awakening up to its midsummer demise.

A sound performance by Atoui, Alan Affichard and Diana Combo is part of the exhibition’s vernissage evening programme.

Alan Affichard is a Berlin based French sound artist. His practice and research on sound and materiality explores the limits and the possible extensions of manufactured and handcrafted objects.

In 2016 he graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (France). In 2017 he was a fellow of the Berlin Program for Artists and in 2018 he took part of a the research program ‘Composing / Public / Space’ led by Tarek Atoui at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. His work has been shown at such venues as Between Bridge (Berlin), Ä / nun (Berlin), Les Instants Chavirés (Montreuil), Treize (Paris), Fieldwork Marfa (Marfa, Texas), Iaspis Foundation (Venice), Sharjah Art Foundation.

Diana Combo is a Portuguese musician and sound artist. She has a B.A. in Sound and Image and an M.A. in Music Arts. She combines a conceptual perspective on sonic work-making with a DIY ethos using turntablism and sound appropriation practices, editing and sound design, composition and interpretation, installation and video. Her work balances folk storytelling with noise and improvised soundscapes. She has performed at Transmediale, Tiny Noise and Festival ERTZ, and in venues such as Casa da Música, Serralves Foundation, Passos Manuel, Maus Hábitos, ZDB, Salon des Amateurs and General Public, amongst others.