Artist
Joe Namy
An American-born, London and Beirut-based artist, educator, and composer, who works collaboratively across mediums—in sound, performance, sculpture, and video.
Namy's projects focus on social constructs of music and organised sound, like the pageantry and politics of opera, gender dynamics of bass, colours and tones of militarisation, migration patterns of instruments, and the complexities of translation in all this—from language to language, from score to sound, from drum to dance. Namy graduated with an M.F.A. from New York University, and has independently studied jazz, Arabic, and heavy metal drumming. In 2011 they took part in the inaugural Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace ISP in Beirut, and now serves on the curricular committee and as a lead mentor.
They often spends years researching and developing projects that unfold over time through various iterations and configurations. Recent works include the sound design for the English National Ballet's dance video "Cinderella Games"; Sophia Al-Maria's Tate Art NOW commission "Beast Type Song"; Cecile B. Evans's "A Screen Test For An Adaptation Of Giselle"; and Tamara Shogaolu's VR projects "Another Dream" and WIP "Echoes of Silence".
