Tapetail Presents:
to be held
Akari Komura and Ilana Waniuk
Saturday, September 19
5-7pm: Open Viewing Installation
7:30-8:30 pm: performance
“to be held” is an installation performance that embodies assemblages of personal memories connected with hands. Tracing what our hands have touched, held, collected, written, and sounded, the installation integrates a collection of the personal objects, textiles, text, light, and shadow that pose three primary questions about the relationship between hands and memories:
What was the first thing you touched today?
Who do you see in your hands?
What memories do your hands carry?
Using field recordings, found objects, overhead projectors, violin, and voice, the performance will be an activation of the space as a score. As the performers interpret and realize the assemblage of objects and memories into sound, the piece also explores what a score can be and how it can be notated with gestural abstraction of objects.
About the Artists
Akari Komura (b.1996) is a composer and intermedia artist from Tokyo, Japan. Akari imagines her score as an invitation for the performers to contemplatively engage with listening and soundmaking. She is interested in calling attention to the everyday space and blurring the boundaries of individual/collective, life/art, and performer/audience relationships. Akari’s artistic exploration is influenced by Fluxus, Deep Listening and acoustic ecology, drawing from the practices of Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, and Hildegard Westerkamp. She is interested in curating participatory performance spaces that gather performers and audiences into a shared, intimate act of listening and soundmaking.
Akari’s works have been presented at the American Composers Orchestra EarShot Reading, Atlantic Music Festival, Composers Conference, New Music Gathering, The Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Nief-Norf, MATA Festival, Oracle Egg, and soundSCAPE (Italy).
Akari holds an M.M. in Composition from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in Vocal Arts from the University of California, Irvine. Akari is currently a Ph.D. composition student at the University of California San Diego.
Ilana Waniuk is a violinist, creator and curator with interests ranging from improvisation to visual arts. Along with pianist Cheryl Duvall, Ilana is a founding member and co-artistic director of Tkarón:to (Toronto) - based contemporary music ensemble Thin Edge New Music Collective, and Balancing on the Edge (multidisciplinary production company merging contemporary music and circus arts). TENMC was the 2020 winner of the Canadian League of Composers/Canadian Music Centre Friends of Canadian Music award and has commissioned over 80 chamber works since its inception in 2011. She is also a founding member of in^set, a flexible trio with Teresa Díaz de Cossio (flute) and David Aguila (trumpet) dedicated to creation, improvisation and experimentation. Ilana has performed on concert stages across Canada, Italy, Argentina, Poland, Japan, Iceland, Mexico, the U.S and Germany. Her creative work explores various configurations of digital and analog materials, often merging graphic notation and improvisation with fixed and live projections. Ilana’s scores have been performed by ensembles such as Duo Lingua, TRAMAS Collective, Acorn Projects, Missing Piece and Bent Frequency (2025/2026 Underscore Call for Scores Winner). Ilana received a doctorate in contemporary performance from the University of California, San Diego where her research explored collaborative audiovisual practices.
Tapetail is Automata’s new experimental sound series, launched in October 2022.
Tapetail presents live events and sound installations featuring the work of experimental sound artists.
We are currently looking to present shows and installations that deal with "liveness" where something about the experience is best presented live, whether through improvisation, special acoustic treatment or audience experience. There’s been a lot of great art happening in the virtual and digital world so now we’re turning our focus back towards bringing people together for sound experiences that are best experienced in a live setting.
Automata’s Tapetail series
is curated by Cassia Streb.
If you are interested in proposing work for the Tapetail series,
please fill out this short query form.