DeutschBorn: Pittsburgh, USA Lives: Berlin
Andrea Parkins is an electroacoustic musician, composer, and sound artist who engages with interactive electronics as compositional/performative process. Working with an array of sonic materials – electronically processed accordion, custom-built software, amplified objects, and electronic feedback – her performances and installations explore connections and slippages between the body, materiality, sound, site, and space.
Parkins’ projects include multi-channel sound performances and intermedia installations, electroacoustic solo and ensemble compositions; and sound for contemporary dance, experimental film and intermedia performance. She performs as a solo artist, and has collaborated with artists such as Ute Wassermann, Magda Mayas, George E. Lewis, Nels Cline, The Necks, choreographer Vera Mantero, and filmmaker Abigail Child, among others. Her performances and installations have been presented at venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Café Oto, The Kitchen, Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Kunsthalle Basel, and Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg. Festival appearances have included NEXT/Bratislava, Cyberfest/St. Petersburg, All Ears/Oslo, Jazz im Augusto/Lisbon, Music Unlimited/Wels, and many more.
Parkins’ recent projects include The Stray II, a site-responsive 8-channel spatial audio and visual installation that was featured at Momentum 12/The Nordic Biennale at Galleri F15 in Moss, Norway; her intermedia installation, Sonic Spaces for the Stray, presented in 2021 at ROM for kunst og arkitektur in Oslo; and her performance/installation, Two Rooms, Variation 1, for 40 loudspeakers and Solo Performer, premiered in 2016 at Akousma Festival in Montreal.
Andrea Parkins has been an invited resident artist at Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida; Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), Stockholm; Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center (NYC); and by Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde. Her recordings are published by Important Records, Infrequent Seams, Confront Recordings, Atavistic, Henceforth Records and Creative Sources; and she can be heard as a contributor on numerous other labels. In 2022-2023, she is a fellow of the Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung / Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme.