Tuesday 5 December 2023, 7.30pm
Two duos of electro-acoustic improvisations.
Ecka Mordecai is a London based artist working with sound, scent and performance.
Her mode is improvisational and driven by a desire to explore the feel of things, be it through touch: making and preparing instruments (cello, horsehair harp, psaltery, eggflute, Bluetooth speakers), or emotionally: exploring the way different sounds, scents and gestures feel and produce feeling.
Notable projects include her solo album Promise & Illusion (Otoroku, 2022), Sound perfumes (Aequill, 2022), soundtrack and voiceover for filmmaker Kamila Kuc’s I was there (plus a written passage in accompanying book published 2025, Delere Press), and musical composition for Voyage Through the Diamond Realm (De Beers at Frieze Art Fair, 2025/2026).
Her viral Instagram project Cable Queen is an ongoing spite-piece inspired by the grind of her job working as a sound technician in a male-dominated industry/world, in which she silently coils audio cables whilst looking into the camera. The comments, written by strangers, expose the conditions of her labour.
She has performed and released music with David Toop & Christian Kobi, Valerio Tricoli (as Mordecoli), Andrew Chalk & Tom James Scott (as Circaea), and as a cellist with Vanishing, Thurston Moore and Alexander Tucker. She has performed the works of Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Antoine Beuger, Yoni Silver and Taku Sugimoto.
David Toop 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. It includes eight acclaimed books, including Rap Attack (1984), Ocean of Sound (1995), Sinister Resonance (2010), Into the Maelstrom (2016), Flutter Echo (2019) and Inflamed Invisible: Writing On Art and Sound 1976-2018 (2019). Briefly a member of David Cunningham’s pop project The Flying Lizards in 1979, he has released fourteen solo albums, from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Sound Body on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label (2006) to Entities Inertias Faint Beings (2016) and Apparition Paintings (2021). His 1978 Amazonas recordings of Yanomami shamanism and ritual were released on Sub Rosa as Lost Shadows (2016). In recent years his collaborations include Rie Nakajima, Akio Suzuki, Tania Caroline Chen, John Butcher, Ken Ikeda, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Sharon Gal, Camille Norment, Sidsel Endresen, Alasdair Roberts, Lucie Stepankova, Fred Frith, Thurston Moore, Ryuichi Sakamoto. Curator of sound art exhibitions including Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery (2000), his opera – Star-shaped Biscuit – was performed in 2012.
“deftly weaves a breathtaking range of techniques and textures on the instrument, spanning frenetic highs to lows of bracing physicality. From dizzying clusters of notes to multilayered melodicism […] Silver gives a visceral, bodily performance”
Alongside his bass clarinet and multi-instrumental solo projects, Yoni has collaboratesd with artists such as Steve Noble, John Edwards, Regan Bowering, Birgit Ulher, and many others. He plays keyboards with Charles Hayward’s band Abstract Concrete, winds and strings in Ashley’s Paul's project RAY (with Otto Willberg); he was a longstanding member of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram's Hyperion Ensemble, and has written orchestral arrangements for artists such as Nico Teen.
John Macedo is an artist and performer from London. His work explores connections, relationships, interdependence and revealing the hidden potential in all sounds, environments and technologies, often in intimate, immersive and intuitive ways.
He performs live solo and has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and artists including Phil Julian, Graham Dunning, Tom White, Yoni Silver, John Butcher, Cath Roberts, John Edwards, Michael Speers, Steve Noble, Sue Lynch, Lee Fraser and Adam Bohman, to name a few. He has had work released by The Tapeworm, Hideous Replica, Sound Holes, and Beartown Records as well as releasing small run and object editions on his own label, The Black Plume Editions. He has performed and presented work in the UK, Europe and US and has led workshops and produced collaborative, educational and community-based projects for Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, Artsadmin and New Contemporaries.
