Live Performance: Isabel Lewis
Live Broadcast | Portals | COSMOGRAM x MONOM

During September 2023, Isabel Lewis returned to Giudecca for a 10-day work period at Cosmogram Studio. We decided to make the best of it by dedicating the 3rd episode of Portals, our series of pioneering “hyper-broadcasts” to Isabel and her performers Eleonora Camerotto, Cecilia Xuetong and Gabriele Valerio, by streaming their performance in Venice at COSMO to Berlin, via HD video, spatialised in 4DSOUND by Monom.

The sound practice of Berlin-based artist Isabel Lewis which, just as her work as dancer and choreographer, is a strategy of response to space, time, architecture and situation. Taking the form of extended flow structured improvisations for voice and electronics, she produces an ambient yet rhythmic sound sampling, layering, distorting, looping and morphing together fragments, from a broad range of musical material: chamber music to Juicy J chopped and screwed then smoothed over and reorganized like a mutating body writhing and swaying. Woven into the sonic textures are Lewis’s own voice masked and transformed by digital effects as well as modified field recordings. Hymns are sung over the scraps and broken pieces of popular culture as Lewis pulls out the fragile beauty of fragmented melodies layered over distorted audio files.