Moreskinsound is a duo of musician/writer David Toop and performance and visual artist Ania Psenitsnikova. They explore extremes of stillness, working with space, presence and the intensity of punctuated silence and its impact on bodies. Their work encompasses live performance using found objects and instruments, flutes, aerial movement and inactions - events in remarkable wild spaces, in sea caves, clifftops and alien landscapes.

Since 2023 their public performances have included the National Gallery London, Prague, Basel, Tartu, Volume Festival Sydney, Punkt Festival Kristiansand, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Knock Tokyo, Hidden Christian Building Nagasaki, Enryuji Temple Isahaya City, Kunisaki Peninsula, Kyushu University, Soto Kyoto, Atelier Arbor Inversa Tokyo, Tatami Studio Tokyo, Tatsue Mingei Museum Mochizuki. Non-public events, described as inactions, have been recorded in Cornwall, Australia, Norway, a cave of bats in Krabi, Thailand, sacred springs in Kyushu, Japan and the ancient and silent Viru peat bog, Estonia. All of these activities can culminate in workshops which explore improvisation, listening, movement, objects, materials and the nature of space.

"From the ceiling of this dark room a swathe of material hung down and the shadow of a shape began to dilate like an accordion opening out, slowly an arm unfolded; this was Psenitsnikova as chrysalis becoming human body." – Jazzwise, November 2024.

Ania Psenitsnikova is a visual and performance artist and curator. Born in Estonia, she has travelled and studied with Flavia Ghisalberti, Moeno Wakamatsu, Masaki Iwana and Daisuke Yoshimoto. Studying piano, classical guitar, voice and accordion in music school and independently since 1988, she has worked as an aerial performance artist since 2011. In the same year she graduated with a First degree in Performance and Visual Arts: Dance at Brighton University. Between 2015 to the present she has collaborated with Daria Apakhonchich, co-curating seven exhibitions in four countries, exploring the censorship phenomenon and participating in performances and events, include the Grow and Decay ecological festival in Estonia. Their exhibition, One Can Not Be Too Careful, Feminist Edition, was nominated for the best visual art award in Brighton Fringe Festival, 2018.

David Toop is a musician, writer and curator. He has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials since 1970. This encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. Artists he has performed with include Ryuichi Sakamoto, Thurston Moore, Sidsel Endresen, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Akio Suzuki and Rie Nakajima, along with butoh dancers Mitsutaka Ishii and Min Tanaka. His books include Ocean of Sound, Into the Maelstrom, Sinister Resonance and Two-Headed Doctor and his record releases include New/Rediscovered Musical Instruments, Sound Body, Entities Inertias Faint Beings, Apparition Paintings, The Shell That Speaks the Sea, Garden of Shadows and Light and his 1978 recordings of Yanomami shamanism, Lost Shadows: In Defence of the Soul.

https://www.moreskinsound.com/
https://instagram.com/moreskinsound