In an era where artistic boundaries blur and collapse, Tarek Atoui's practice stands as a radical reimagining of what music can be. His instruments don't simply make sound—they become sculptural entities that breathe, vibrate, and speak in languages that transcend traditional musical vocabulary. Now, coinciding with his major exhibitions across Europe, the Lebanese artist releases MONO LOGS, a groundbreaking three-LP set that documents these extraordinary instruments in conversation with some of the world's most adventurous musicians. Tarek Atoui's multivalent practice moves between art and music, education and performance. At its heart are instruments that the artist has created with artisans and musicians in recent years. The collection features an international constellation of performers: Tarek Atoui, Jad Atoui, Nicolas Becker, Laure Boer, Gobi Drab, Diego Espinosa, Juan Garcia, Susanna Gartmayer, Mazen Kerbaj, Léo Maurel, Juan José Rivas, Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, Fernando Vigueras, Darío Bernal Villegas, Boris Shershenkov, and DJ Sniff. Each brings their own musical language to bear on Atoui's inventions, creating dialogues that reveal new facets of both performer and instrument.
The LPs bring together sounds produced by a number of international musicians playing solos on the artist's instruments in different contexts: in their respective studios, Atoui's studio, and in the exhibition spaces of Kunsthaus Bregenz and kurimanzutto's gallery. This is no conventional recording project. The artist works with composers and craftsmen from different countries to invent complex instruments with strong sculptural halos, testing the acoustic properties and the unique ways in which elements like bronze, water, glass and stone transmit and reflect sound. What sets this project apart is its dual conception as both document and tool. These records capture the life of the instruments and are also conceived as vinyls that DJs, turntablists and sound practitioners can sample and use. In Atoui's vision, the recordings become raw material for future compositions, allowing his instruments to live multiple lives across different contexts and creators. It's a democratization of the experimental process—an invitation for others to build upon the sonic foundations he's established.
Atoui's approach fundamentally challenges traditional notions of musical performance. In his approach to making an instrument, Atoui seems set on emphasising the primordial quality of enjoying a sound, expanding the definition of what a composition could be. There are no time signatures or scores. No melodies or rhythms, not in the traditional sense. Instead, his work operates where "The starting point is to consider sound as vibration and energy source. This energy source is then translated by us to a cognitive message. But the body translates it to another type of message". The release coincides with Atoui's remarkable exhibition cycle across four major European institutions. On the occasion of his exhibitions at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Kunsthaus Bregenz, S.M.A.K. Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent and Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, between 2023 and 2025, the MONO LOGS trilogy serves as both documentation and extension of his gallery work. The recordings allow the instruments to exist beyond their physical exhibition contexts, carrying their voices into living rooms, studios, and concert halls worldwide.
This collaborative approach extends throughout his work, particularly his WITHIN project, which since 2012 has involved working with deaf and hard of hearing people to explore the modes of tactile, physical, gestural and visual sound perception, and develop instruments that can be played by deaf as well as by hearing people. His signature Reverse Collection methodology involves inviting musicians to improvise on historical instruments, then passing recordings to instrument makers to develop new instruments that would allow the recreation of these sounds—a process of sonic archaeology that creates instruments carrying echoes of musical traditions while pointing toward uncharted territories.
