Stones that breathe and water that sees: Tarek Atoui

With dripping water, a breathing organ, and handmade Korean drums, Improvisation in 10 Days unites Atoui’s work into an evolving sonic environment

Tarek Atoui on his first solo exhibition in Italy at Pirelli HangarBicocca

Asked about early influences—dance and techno music from his first years living in France in the late nineties—the Beirut-born artist, Tarek Atoui, glances at the phone recording the interview, checking the time. Is any of it present in the show?

“There is. It’s hidden, but it will appear in one minute.”

“In one minute? Can you point us to where it is?”

“Everywhere. It’s everywhere.”

He laughs, shifting into a discussion of improvisation (true to the exhibition’s title), the rhythms of South African techno, his work with the hearing impaired, and even chuckling at the mention of Death Grips. On the benches in front of the shed at Pirelli HangarBicocca, large percussive drums frame Tarek Atoui, wrapped in a striking bright scarf, as he chats about his exhibition, Improvisation in 10 Days, running in Milan from February 7 to July 20, 2025.

As he disappears into the exhibition—off to give an interview in French or check on the precise rotations of an element in his exhibition—he calls back:

“Thank you! But oh no—you missed the techno part!”

To listen, sit on the marble blocks: Tarek Atoui Improvisation in 10 Days’ the exhibition space

Entering the exhibition space, it’s unclear what visitors can and can’t touch. Wires snake across the floor, strategically placed in the gaps of the concrete, creating a tension between chaos and careful arrangement. Traditional exhibition spaces enforce a strict “please don’t touch the art” ethos, but in Tarek Atoui’s Improvisation in 10 Days, you can’t help but get entangled in the work—physically and sonically—as you traverse the Shed from one end to the other.

Throughout the exhibition, visitors can pause on solitary, single-person stools scattered around the room. These small, meditative islands become listening stations, where sound moves around the visitor—its source hidden, yet its presence palpable.

The audience completes the scene of Improvisation in 10 Days: an older couple reclining on massive marble blocks, a group of friends silently watching a rock scrape across a surface, a small child clambering across a quarry-plucked stone. Still and listening, the resting visitors evoke the mythological figures painted on a Grecian vase—poised between motion and contemplation.

Waters’ Witness, a project created with Eric La Casa and Chris Watson

These marble blocks are part of Waters’ Witness (2020–2023), a project created with Eric La Casa and Chris Watson. Using underwater and environmental microphones, Atoui recorded the sonic landscapes of port cities, constructing a portrait of their industrial, cultural, and ecological rhythms. Originally commissioned for his exhibition at Fridericianum, Kassel, the version at Pirelli HangarBicocca features marble from Athens, the same material used in the restoration of ancient Greek temples.

On the origins of this work, Atoui recounts, “I started by paying attention to the harbors of cities that began as coastal ports—Beirut, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Porto, Sydney. Over the past ten years, I’ve been visiting and recording their harbors.

As someone who came from Beirut, I saw how the harbor was central to the city’s life: the city came out of it. But nowadays, harbors have become fenced-off, high-security zones. You can’t access it unless you have a permit, a task, or a reason to be there.

Modernity has created a disconnect between harbors and their original context. I wanted to bring the harbor back to the city—to say, let’s go listen to the harbor. There was an intuition behind this: if we truly listen, harbors can tell us a lot about a place. Because when you go to a harbor, you don’t just listen—you see what’s being imported and exported. You see who is working, what industries surround it. Some harbors have natural reserves, others by oil refineries, military bases, archaeological sites.

Each harbor and its surroundings are living witnesses to a place’s history and identity. And when you listen it— what’s happening in its waters and surroundings—you get a very nice portrait.”

These recordings are accompanied by sculptural works that listen to water as it bubbles, drips, plonks, and flows between forms. In one corner, stacked bowls receive droplets that leak through the stopcock valve of a bulbous separatory funnel. Rigged with microphones, modulating boards, and precisely calibrated stands, the work blurs the line between artistic inquiry, academic investigation, and experimentation. 

Beyond the exhibition itself, Atoui’s practice is marked by a value for the didactic. Throughout the exhibition period at HangarBicocca, there will be two workshops: On Vibration and Resonance—The Hive and Drops and Bubble—The Rain. Open to both adults and children, these workshops explore how sound is produced and reflect on the objects and environments that shape our auditory experience.

Structures as tangible research output – “An alternative ability to relate to sound”

Complementary to Waters’ Witness, the exhibition also features elements from Souffle Continu (2022–2024) and The Rain (2023–2024). These works, commissioned for past exhibitions, are arranged at HangarBicocca in a way that reflects both Atoui’s career and the site-specific nature of this particular show. While they hint at the artist’s past, they also bring a fresh, contextualized experience to the space.

Souffle Continu is a research project exploring sound and vibration in dialogue with deaf students. The goal of the work is to challenge traditional perceptions of sound and deafness. Atoui reflects, “I started to view deaf people as experts of understanding sound. This was life-changing for me because it opened up new ideas in my understanding of sound and materials—how to work with materials, how to generate sound from them.”

“Deafness, I realized, is not an absence but an alternative ability to relate to sound. As hearing people, we rely a lot on our ears to process sound. In the case of deaf people, the absence of the mediation of ears makes sound a vibration, an energy, that you can experience with the body, with the fingers, with the eyes, with sign language. Actually, I started to believe that deaf people are able to listen better than us, who just hear. We are hearing people, but they are listening people—they are listening bodies.”

Within this work, Wind Houses #1 and #2 are sound rooms inspired by Johannes Goebel’s SubBass Protone (1980s). Visitors, after donning a pair of slippers, enter the transparent-panelled boxes. Upon entering you realize, these are not just rooms, but instruments themselves. Sound is generated by wind moving through a vertically sliding opening—here, sound isn’t just heard, it’s felt.

The instruments and their makers according to Tarek Atoui

Large hides, stretched across circular frames marks the presence of Atoui’s The Rain (2023–2024). Developed during a research trip to South Korea and displayed at the 14th Gwangju Biennale in 2023, the work leverages musical composition, material, and technological devices to explore the nuance of earth, water, fire, and wind.

On February 5th, Atoui and Seo In Seok, the drum maker and musician, will activate the work with a performance for the opening, where they will play the drums for the audience. Reflecting on the instruments present in his work, Atoui shares, “They are, first of all, instruments. For most of the instruments I make, the authorship is not mine. The instrument makers who I work with have the intellectual property—even if the concept comes from me, even if I help develop it or finance it, or do the research. Therefore, [the instrument makers] can reproduce it as much as they want and sell it at any price they want. I don’t take it. It’s their thing. Why? Because the idea is about this dissemination.”

In Seok’s drums are crafted by hand, a skill passed down through multiple generations of his family. Some bear a distinctive maker’s mark—a Korean signature burnt on the swirling wood of the instruments. For this exhibition, Atoui and In Seok assembled some of the drums on-site, pulling wet hides through frames. The towering surfaces of the works stand throughout the space, a presence that shifts and develops as the exhibition unfolds.

The generative potential of improvisation in an exhibition space

Tarek Atoui’s Improvisation in 10 Days is not just an exhibition—it’s an evolving process. On revisiting his past exhibitions for this event, Tarek Atoui explains, “It’s not a survey, nor is it about retracing several years of work. It’s more an exercise in improvisation—working with what’s available rather than trying to have everything set from the start. Something I love about working with instruments and sound objects is their ability to take on different lives. When you create an instrument, you can create so many pieces with it. Why confine it to a single exhibition or a fixed form?”

His approach prioritizes spontaneity, listening, and participation, pushing the boundaries of what it means to “improvise” within the structure of an exhibition. For Atoui, improvisation is not just a technique but a philosophy, shaping both his music and his approach to exhibition-making.

“I’ve always improvised in performances and concerts, but I had never improvised an exhibition.” He says on exploring this realm within the walls of a museum. “For me, what does it mean to improvise an exhibition? Improvisation is the highest level of art—it’s what you reach after mastering an instrument or learning to listen and relate to others through sound.”

Improvisation is not just central to his practice, but a means of marrying together the past lives of the pieces that are exhibited in the HangarBicocca space. “What I wanted in this show is for these identities to blend together, not just to highlight their conceptual origins, but also to present them as sound objects, as instruments—things that have the potential to communicate beyond their products and origins. This is where the idea of improvisation came in.”

“When I received the invitation to HangarBicocca, I saw the space as a big canvas. What distinguishes this space from others? It’s vast, open to light, open to sound, open to people—transparent, with no walls to obstruct the experience. And it has an incredible team, people I felt I could truly improvise with. You cannot improvise with just anyone. But at HangarBicocca, the elements were there—a fertile ground to take improvisation to the level of exhibition-making.”

Tarek Atoui

Tarek Atoui (b. 1980, Beirut, Lebanon) is a Paris-based artist and electro-acoustic composer renowned for his exploration of sound. Atoui’s artistic research draws from diverse geographical, historical, and social contexts, and he has exhibited widely in venues such as the Tate Modern, Venice Biennale, and documenta. His first solo exhibition in Italy, Improvisation in 10 Days, will be presented at Pirelli HangarBicocca from February 6 to July 20, 2025.

Annalise June Kamegawa