Integrating the landscape, personal objects and actions, our bodies, our musical passions and interests, and our individual exploratory processes, this workshop is about foraging into your artistic practice, searching for triggers, ideas, inspiration, development. Oren Ambarchi & Crys Cole - a true power duo of modern exploratory art and music - will guide you in getting lost in your creative process, discovering parts of your work that you weren't expecting, surprising yourself and freeing your instincts.

We'll engage in active sound/music exploration, listening, discussion and analysis, developing our listening practice as an active process of creativity. We'll explore new tools - from creative tricks and tactics to instruments and tools - and try out new instruments. We'll reflect on our own work (past, present and future possible), and ask the big questions: why, how, what am I trying to achieve? We'll explore collaboration as a way to push ourselves, reacting to fresh/different/surprising ideas and approaches.

At it's core, this session is about getting lost in your creative process, reflecting on your own work, finding your own voice, diving intrepidly into the possibilities of your own creativity and developing your own identity as an artist.

Canadian sound artist Crys Cole works in composition, performance and sound installation. Taking a conceptual approach, she generates subtle and imperfect sounds through haptic gestures and seemingly mundane materials to create texturally nuanced works that continuously retune the ear. Crys has performed globally, and collaborators include James Rushford, Francis Plagne, Leif Elggren, Tetuzi Akiyama, Seiji Morimoto, Jessika Kenney, David Rosenboom, Annea Lockwood, Keith Rowe, Lance Austin Olsen, Jamie Drouin, Mathieu Ruhlmann, David Behrman, Tim Olive, Graham Lambkin and, of course, Oren. Her work has been published on Black Truffle, Penultimate Press, Students of Decay, Ultra Eczema, Boomkat, Second Editions, caduc, Bocian, Another Timbre and Infrequency Arts, with guest appearances on Touch and Editions Mego; she has been exhibited in Canada, Russia, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Thailand.

Oren Ambarchi's works are hesitant and tense extended songforms located in the cracks between several schools: modern electronics and processing; laminal improvisation and minimalism; hushed, pensive songwriting; the deceptive simplicity and temporal suspensions of composers such as Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier; and the physicality of rock music, slowed down and stripped back to its bare bones, abstracted and replaced with pure signal. Oren has performed and recorded with a diverse array of artists such as Fennesz, Charlemagne Palestine, Sunn 0)), Thomas Brinkmann, crys cole, Keiji Haino, Alvin Lucier, John Zorn, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Curran, Loren Connors, Manuel Gottsching/Ash Ra, Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke, Keith Rowe, David Rosenboom, Julia Reidy, Akio Suzuki, Phill Niblock, John Tilbury, Richard Pinhas, Evan Parker, Fire! and many more; he has released on Touch, Editions Mego, Drag City, PAN, Southern Lord, Kranky and Tzadik. His acclaimed trio with Keiji Haino and Jim O’Rourke performs in Tokyo annually with many of their concerts documented on Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label. Black Truffle has over 90 releases to date.

In 2003 Oren's live release Triste received an honorary mention in the Prix Ars Electronica digital music category. His release Quixotism was listed in The Wire magazine’s top 50 releases of 2014 and that same year Pitchfork named him Experimental Artist Of The Year. His 2016 album Hubris and featured an astonishing cast of players including Crys Cole, Mark Fell, Arto Lindsay, Jim O'Rourke, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Ricardo Villalobos amongst others. In May 2019 renowned London venue Cafe Oto celebrated Oren's 50th birthday (and the 10 year anniversary of his Black Truffle label) with a 3-day festival featuring a packed international bill of special guests, projects and collaborations, all closely associated with Oren and his label.



WHERE AND WHEN?

The course takes place at our residential centre in Aulus les Bains. It's two hours south of Toulouse, high in the French Pyrenees, very near the border with Spain. For detailed travel information, see the transport section. The course starts on Wednesday, August 16, 2023. We advise that you arrive the evening before (15/08/2023) - dinner and accommodation that night is included. The course runs for five days, ending on Sunday night. Accommodation on Sunday night is included, then we leave on Monday morning (21/08/2023). If you decide to take the minibus with us, you will be picked- up in Toulouse at 6pm on 15/08/2023, and will be back in Toulouse at 11am on 21/08/2023.

HOW TO BOOK

To book your place on the course, click the button in the green section above. You won't pay anything right now - we'll send you a booking confirmation email with everything you need to know next. Your place is reserved without payment for three days.

You'll find a payment link in the booking confirmation email - follow the link to make a payment (either in full, or the first payment of a month payment plan). In the latter case, a monthly payment plan will be put in place, so your card will be charged 1/ of the fee today, and 1/ each month (on the same day) for an additional -1 months. All card payments are handled by Stripe, and are extremely secure. We don't store any card data ourselves - all of this is handled securely off-site by Stripe. If you have a discount or grant code, you will be able to add it when you follow the payment link in your confirmation email.

Once you've made a payment, you'll receive another email containing your receipt, links to resources, contact information and access to our group chat to discuss the workshop with other participants.