Kovács/O’Doherty

Statement

Kata Kovács and Tom O’Doherty have worked as a collaborative duo since 2011. Their work combines elements of durational and time-based art, minimalist movement, and electroacoustic music and sound. They are interested in processes, sounds, and movements that come close to imperceptibility, and the ways in which this material can be transformed through repetition, patterning, layering, and archiving.

They have exhibited and presented work at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Serralves Museum, Porto; National Museum of Contemporary Art (Chiado), Lisbon; Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin; Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig; and Digital in Berlin’s Kiezsalonseries, Berlin, among others. They have been recipients of the LACMA Art + Technology Lab Award, and of the Tanzstipendium award of the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa. They live and work in Berlin, Germany.

GlogauAIR Project

In their time at GlogauAIR, Kata and Tom have been researching and re-tracing the routes of abandoned railway lines in Berlin and Brandenburg — sites of infrastructural absence, of geographical traces, and of historical memory. The work combines investigation of these locations with parallel research into audio machine-learning models. The project will thus pair algorithmically generated audio of non-existent trains with physical locations of disappeared and non-existent train routes.

Installation, New media, and Sound Art.

CV Summary

Kata Kovács

• Education: Diploma, Contemporary/Modern Dance, Budapest Contemporary Dance School (2002-2007); Spanish Language and Literature, Eötvös Loránd University (2000-2002)
• Born: 1981, Kecskemét, Hungary

Tom O’Doherty

• Education: M.Sc., Multimedia, Dublin City University (2000-2001); B.A., English, Greek and Roman Civilization, University College Dublin (1997-2000)
• Born: 1978, Dublin, Ireland

Selected grants and awards

• Jun, 2017: Grant recipient, International travel grant, Berliner Senat, Berlin, Germany
• May, 2016: Awardee and grant recipient, LACMA Art + Technology Awards 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA
• May, 2013: Grant recipient, Tanzstipendium, Berliner Senat, Berlin, Germany

Ongoing work

• Jan, 2016–present: Minute/Year. Multi-year automated durational installation in annual iterations. Automated, multi-year durational work, ongoing since 1. January 2016, in which sound is automatically layered in a resonant space, for one minute each day, and published online, as audio and accompanying spectrogram image. Presented in annually-altered locations, and currently in its fifth annual iteration (since 1. Jan., 2020) at bb15, Linz, Austria.

Selected past exhibitions and events

• 13.–15. Nov, 2019: Minute/Year (2016-2018). Video installation, talk, PARSE Research Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden. Presenting Minute/Year (Archive, 2016–2018), a three-channel video with sound, derived from the daily data generated by Minute/Year, and accompanying talk, presented at the third biennial PARSE Research Conference.
• 5.-25. Oct, 2019: Carried Bells. Solo exhibition | Hošek Contemporary, Berlin. Presenting the process-based accumulating installation work Carried Bells, over the course of twenty consecutive days.
• 13. Aug, 2019: KvT. Dual exhibition | bb15, Linz, Austria. Presenting KvT, a minimalist electroacoustic sound and photographic performance work, alongside work by Julian Day.
• 9. Dec, 2018: Nearness — New Sound and Performance Works. Performance | Ausland Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Presenting 1-100, a process-based performance, as part of the Place Rhythm. Pulse series, curated by Gretchen Blegen, along with work by plan b performance.
• 3., 9. Oct, 2018: KvT. Group exhibition | Bludny kamen Gallery, Opava, Czech Republic; Savremena Galerija Subotica, Subotica, Serbia. Presenting KvT, a minimalist electroacoustic sound and photographic performance work, alongside work by Agente Costura and Stephen Doyle.
• 21.–24. Sep, 2017: Signal Tide. Sound and extraterrestrial radio installation | LACMA Art + Technology Lab, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA. Presenting the sound and extraterrestrial radio installation Signal Tide. Incorporating music and sound created collaboratively with David Bryant (Godspeed You! Black Emperor). Facilitated by Joel Ferree (Program Director, LACMA Art + Technology Lab) and Amy Heibel (Adjunct Curator, LACMA Art + Technology Lab; Vice President, LACMA).
• 12.–13. Apr, 2017: P!. Exhibition, conference, and festival | Chiado Museum (Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea), São Luiz Teatro Municipal, and other locations, Lisbon, Portugal. Presenting the durational installation Increments, at Chiado Museum (Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea), Lisbon, as part of the exhibition, conference, and festival P!, curated by Pedro Rocha and Ana Pais.
• 8.–9. Oct, 2016: Afterglow. Installation | Musikbrauerei, Berlin, Germany. Sound installation presented as part of the closing event of the 2016 Kiezsalon series of events, presented by Digital in Berlin.
• 1.–24. Apr, 2016: Restructuring the Axis. Group exhibition | Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig, Germany. Presenting the durational installation Increments – as a five-hour-long event on April 2. and 3., and thereafter as a photo series and daily audio remnant. Group exhibition, together with David Augusto Rios Alomia and Takahiro Ueda. Curated by Candace Goodrich.
• 19.–20. Sep, 2015: The Museum as Performance. Group exhibition | Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal. Presenting the durational installation Increments, as part of the exhibition The Museum as Performance, curated by Pedro Rocha, Cristina Grande, and Ricardo Nicolau. With Alex Cecchetti, Anastasia Ax & Lars Siltberg, Isabel Carvalho, Loreto Martínez Troncoso, Maria Hassabi, Musa Paradisiaca, New Noveta, and Vivo.

Lectures, talks, residencies

• 8. Jun, 2017: Scope Sessions #66. Artist’s talk | Panke, Berlin, Germany. Presenting the talk ‘Self-surveillance and Pervasive Data’.
• Apr, 2017: Artist residency, Queens Collective, Marrakesh, Morocco
• 28. Sep, 2014: NAH DRAN: Tanzstipendiaten. Artist’s talk | ada Studio Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Presenting the talk ‘Sound, Movement, and Silence’.
• Dec, 2011–present: Ice. Ongoing research process | Berlin, Germany. Research process related to the durational video work Ice.

Gallery