Aubry Gilles
Gilles Aubry is a Swiss sound artist, musician and researcher living between Lausanne and Berlin. His practice is based on a performative approach to field recording, documents and historical sources, often in collaboration with other artists and researchers. He critically addresses listening, sound practices, music, technology and environmental voices, examining their relations to power structures and ideologies in various contexts. Using formats such as installation, live performance, film, publication and radio, he creates works that playfully reconfigure materials and discourses into speculative spaces for shared experience and reflection.
From 2010 to 2012 Aubry was a guest artist of the Global Prayers research project in Berlin, focusing on the use of sound technology in neo-pentecostal communities in Kinshasa with exhibitions and performances at the House of World Cultures (HKW) in Berlin and Camera Austria in Graz. In 2013 he was an artist in residence at CONA in Mumbai for a research on material aspects of sound practices in the Bollywood film industry. The movie “Notes via Soundscape of Bollywood” was premiered at the Marseille International Documentary Film Festival (FID) in 2014. The installation “And who sees the mystery” was shown at the 2014 Art Biennale in Marrakech, based on a research with the performer Zouheir Atbane on the return to Morocco of the “Paul Bowles collection of traditional Moroccan music”. In collaboration with Rob Millis, the live performance „Jewel of the Ear“ mixed funeral recordings from Varanassi and early Indian shellac records, commissioned by the Art’s Birthday Festival 2015 in Berlin. With his installations “From A to Om” and “Tone Collection”, Aubry re-examined the epistemological framework of WWI-prisoners-of-war voice recordings from the Lautarchiv collection in Berlin, presented in exhibitions in Bengalore, Kochi, Karachi and Berlin in 2016. The same year Aubry received the European Sound Art Award attributed by WDR Radio for his site specific installation “A Space of Attunement (from oud to guitar to oud)” at the Skulpturenmuseum in Marl. In 2017 he was part of documenta14 (Kassel/Athens) with “The Gramophone Effect”, a commissioned sound piece co-realized with Robert Millis.
He has toured and exhibited internationally, including documenta14 (2017), Alhamra Art Center Lahore (2017), café Oto London (2017), Kunstraum Bethanien Berlin (2016), Clark House Mumbai (2016), Art Council Karachi (2016), Skulpturenmuseum Marl (2016), FMAC Geneva (2016), MAGA Museum Gallarate (2015), Kunstmuseum Lucerne (2015), Khoj Art Center New Delhi (2015), TUSK Festival Newcastle (2015), Tsonami Festival Valparaiso (2014), Savvy Contemporary Berlin (2014), Friedmann Gallery New York (2014), Marrakech Biennale (2014), LEAP art space Berlin (2013), HeK Basel (2013), House of World Cultures Berlin (2012), Kontraste Festival Krems (2011), MACBA Barcelona (2010).
Aubry is also a musician in experimental noise band MONNO and his solo works are available on the labels Adocs, Winds Measure, Cronica Electronica, Gruenrekorder, Universinternational and Absinth Records. His latest LP “And Who Sees The Mystery” is available on Corvo Records.
