Tarek Atoui Brings Sonic Playground to Tate's Turbine Hall — SkimNews
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- Tarek Atoui's Hyundai Commission opens at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall on 13 October and runs until 11 April 2027, transforming the cavernous industrial space into one of his trademark "places for listening and playing."
- Atoui's installations feature handmade instruments built from scavenged materials — tentacular wind organs, glass booths functioning as walk-in flutes, marble boulders emitting woozy pulses, and bleeping synthesizers — that double as sculptures when no one is performing.
- Atoui says the Turbine Hall's unpredictable acoustics and shifting audience don't concern him because his work prioritizes process over "ideal execution," representing a move away from concert halls "on to the street and into the market."
- Atoui's career is charted by encounters with communities including Palestinian children in refugee camps, for whom he developed composition software using PlayStation joysticks, and deaf students at the Amal School for the Deaf in Sharjah, where bass speakers taught him "there is more than one way of hearing."
- Atoui's project Waters' Witness records the ambient noise of seas around harbor cities from Istanbul to Sharjah, capturing everything from Athens's quiet Salamis waters to Singapore's "underwater explosions, military exercises, the noise of ships in the bay."
- Atoui, who left Lebanon to study experimental music in France under the influence of Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, and the Fluxus movement, rejects the music industry's "treadmill of making albums and touring" in favor of collaborative, process-driven work where the audience is "his most important collaborator."
Why it matters: Atoui's Turbine Hall commission gives the Tate's flagship annual slot — previously held by artists like Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor — to a sound artist who treats visitors as collaborators rather than spectators, potentially reshaping how major museums frame audience participation. The 13 October opening launches a six-month run during which thousands of daily visitors will encounter handmade instruments and live improvisation in the heart of a working museum.
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