Initiated in autumn 2020, Namy worked with a group of young people through a series of online sessions to explore open-source sound technologies and creatively examine how music and deeper forms of listening can shape our experiences, memories, relationships, identity and wellbeing.
The 2020 Assembly Mixtape Club generated a series of on-line provocations for young people to collectively explore the politics of listening, sharing and distribution, helping to shape a greater sense of self, environment and community. The group’s shared research looked at how different environments or locations may influence our memories.
In Autumn 2021, Namy hosted the second iteration of Assembly Mixtape Club at The White House, collaborating with a second cohort of young people to produce a new sound work incorporating shared research, reflections and conversations with social care staff and service users. This site-specific piece was activated across the Becontree in autumn 2021, alongside the broader programme to mark the centenary of the estate.
Joe Namy (UK/Lebanon/USA) is an artist, educator, and composer, often working collaboratively and across mediums – in sound, performance, photography, text, video, and installation.Namy’s projects often focus on the social constructs of music and organized sound, such as the pageantry and geo-politics of opera, the noise laws and gender dynamics of bass, the colours and tones of militarization, the migration patterns of instruments and songs, 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, was a participant in the inaugural Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace independent study program in Beirut, and has independently studied jazz, Arabic, and heavy metal drumming.
Recent exhibitions, screenings and performances include Le18 Rooftop Disguised as Dancefloor (1-54 Forum, Marrakech MO, 2020); Half Blue (Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin DE, 2020 and Minneapolis Museum of American Art, US, 2019); Libretto-o-o d’artifice(Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, 2020); Automobile Redux (V&A Museum, London, 2019); ‘32: The Rescore (Sharjah Art Foundation, AE, 2019); The Eighth Automobile (Art Night London, 2019); Automobile (Durub Al Tawaya, Abu Dhabi UE, 2019).
Joe Namy: Assembly Mixtape Club is commissioned by The White House as part of New Town Culture