Intermissions: Tomoko Sauvage

Tomoko Sauvage is a Paris-based Japanese composer and artist who is best known for her long-time musical practice on her own original instrument, the Waterbowls, which she developed with inspiration from the traditional South Indian instrument Jaltarang. Her long-term experimentation, enlivened by tactile research on properties of materials, transforms water-filled porcelain bowls into an aqueous electroacoustic instrument. She animates the inanimate through tuning water and vessels, making them vibrate and magnifying their tiny sounds that are otherwise quasi-inaudible. In her amplified waters, Sauvage plays with water drops and waves, clay, stones, shells and glass objects as idiophonic or membranophonic instruments and often in combination with bubbles that are used to create underwater aerophones. Sauvage’s active use of acoustic feedback, a phenomenon generally considered troublesome, has led her to engage in an encompassing approach to the architecture, the acoustic space and the presence of all matters within. For the Renaissance Society’s Intermissions series—Sauvage’s first-ever public appearance in Chicago—she occupies the museum’s gallery in an exploratory one-week mini-residency, culminating in two nights of public performances.

For two decades, Sauvage has been performing internationally at institutions and festivals such as Barbican Centre (London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Maerz Musik (Berlin), Musée d’art moderne (Paris), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Nyege Nyege Festival (Uganda), and Wonder Cabinet (Palestine). Her installation and video works have been shown at Sharjah Art Foundation and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.