ISSUE’s 2012 Artists-in-Residence: Aki Onda

“After performing as a musician using cassettes and electronics for close to a decade, I am now ready to move on to a new phase of my career. I would like to work more in interdisciplinary fields of collaboration, with filmmakers and choreographers. Moving images captured on film and moving bodies of dancers have always been vivid sources of inspiration for me in creating sound. I would like to experiment in between these fields, exploring the gaps and unknown territories within collaboration.”

Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and visual artist. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project: works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Blixa Bargeld.

Established in 2006, ISSUE’s AIR program provides emerging artists with a 3-month residency including rehearsal space, production, curatorial, and pr/marketing support to create new works, to reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience. ISSUE’s Artist-in-Residence program is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Jerome Foundation, the Suzanne Fiol Memorial Fund, and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York’s 62 counties.