SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE is an experimental sound collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki in New York City (2000 – present), and joined by Simone Merli in 2008. Following the participation of Dug Winningham and Kamran Sadeghi throughout the years, the Collective currently operates in a continuously rotating constellation of sound artists and musicians.
Their approach to composition combines anthropology, ethnography, non-linear narrative, psycho-geography, the observation of nature, and explorations in recording and synthesis. The source material of their works is always linked to specific locations, natural or artificial, and requires long periods of investigative travel and field work.
Distinguished collaborators include American singer, songwriter and poet Patti Smith, Ethiopian Jazz musician Mulatu Astatke, American photographer Nan Goldin and French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard. The Collective have also written original scores for contemporary dance choreographer Sasha Waltz.
Along the years, they performed live, among other spaces and festivals, at Opéra de Lyon, CTM Festival, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Barbican Centre, Berghain, Centre Georges Pompidou, Florence Gould Hall, Mobile Art by Zaha Hadid in Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York; MUDAM, MuCEM, Museo Madre, National Museum of Singapore, New Museum, Palazzo Reale in Milan, La Triennale, Radialsystem V, documenta14 in Athens and Kassel, Funkhaus in Berlin, Manifesta12 in Palermo.
They had solo exhibitions at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, the District Six Museum in Cape Town, Capo d’Arte, Gagliano del Capo (Lecce, Italy), the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, the Beit Museum in Beirut, and in New York’s Times Square, where in April 2016 they mounted JUNGLE-IZED, a large participative audio-visual installation.