Dr Gascia Ouzounian
Dr Gascia Ouzounian
Lecturer in Music
Email: g.ouzounian@qub.ac.uk
Tel: +44 28 9097 5203
Office: Music Building
Address: School of Creative Arts, Music Building, Queen's University Belfast,
BT7 1NN
Key Roles:
Administrative:
Director of Performance Studies
Teaching:
Twentieth-Century music; Experimental Music; Solo and Ensemble Performance; Women & Music; MA and PhD thesis and dissertation supervision
Achievements and Distinctions
Gascia Ouzounian is a musicologist and violinist. Her research is focused on experimental music and sound art traditions after 1950, with particular interests in sound installation art, site-specific sound, conceptual sound art, and intermedia composition. Her writing has been published in journals including Journal of the Society for American Music, Computer Music Journal, Organised Sound and Journal of Visual Culture, among others. Gascia wrote the introduction to a monograph on sound/media artist Paul DeMarinis, Buried In Noise (Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, 2010), and contributed a chapter on sound installation art for the forthcoming edited volume Music, Sound, and the Reconfiguration of Public and Private Space (eds. Georgina Born and Tim Rice, Cambridge University Press).
As a violinist Gascia has performed extensively in North America and Europe, appearing with such ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (through a Carnegie Hall fellowship), Bang On A Can All-Stars (through their MASS MoCA residency programme), Sinfonia Toronto (as a soloist), and Theatre of Eternal Music Strings Ensemble, among many others. Gascia has recorded the music of La Monte Young and Morton Feldman with cellist Charles Curtis, and has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre and S.T.E.I.M. in Amsterdam. She is a member of a bio-music ensemble, The Biomuse Trio, the improvisation trio Pale Gates of Sunrise, and directs the experimental music choir Bird On A Wire.
Gascia studied performance and computer applications in music at McGill University, where she was a student of violinist Denise Lupien. She earned a PhD in critical studies/experimental practices from the University of California, San Diego, where she was awarded a University Humanities Fellowship. Her dissertation, Sound Art and Spatial Practices: Situating Sound Installation Art Since 1958, explored the history of sound installation through the lens of critical spatial theory. Gascia was appointed to Queen's in 2008, and leads the performance studies programme in the School of Creative Arts.
Selected Publications
Ouzounian G. (forthcoming 2012).'Sound Installation Art: From Spatial Poetics to Politics, Aesthetics to Ethics,' in Georgina Born and Tim Rice (eds.) Music, Sound, and the Reconfiguration of Public and Private Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ouzounian, G. (2010). 'Interview with Paul DeMarinis'. Computer Music Journal 34(4): 10-21.
Selected Compositions and Installations
Ouzounian, G. with R. Benjamin Knapp and Eric Lyon. 'Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds' (2011).
An ensemble of 4 performers who wear custom-designed EEG monitors generate an immersive sound environment through their brainwaves as they rest, sleep, and awaken over the course of one night.
View programme notes and essay 'On Music as a State of Being' (2011) by G. Ouzounian
View Excerpt (Introductory video)
Ouzounian, G. and Conan McIvor, 'If The Root Be In Confusion Nothing Will Be Well Governed' (2010).
A multi-channel audio and video installation of 'Paragraph 7' from Cornelius Cardew's 'The Great Learning' (1969) featuring Bird On A Wire. In the installation, two different recordings of 'Paragraph 7' from are screened simultaneously on opposing walls in a darkened room. Each screen shows 4 simultaneously recorded videos inter-weaved to appear as a single, continuous shot.
Installed at Ormeau Baths Gallery 'Arrivals' Exhibition curated by Ciara Hickey (29 July - 11 September 2010)
View Excerpt (single wall projection only)
Ouzounian, G. and Chloe Griffin, 'EDEN EDEN EDEN' (2009).
An overnight audiovisual composition for 13 musicians and film projections. The ensemble continuously constructs and deconstructs a 26-part chord, a 13-part natural harmonic series that always beats in near-unison with itself. A projector shows three superimposed films prepared as continuously extending loops. Members of the audience, who are invited to sleep during the performance, shift between waking and dreaming states.
View Excerpt from the premiere at Basso (Berlin, 15-16 April 2009)
Selected Conference Presentations
- Ouzounian, G. 'The Body's Music: Physiological Interfaces in Musical Performance." Performa, University of Aveiro, Portugal (May 19-21, 2011)
- Ouzounian, Gascia and R. Benjamin Knapp. "Bodies as (Critical) Instruments: BioMusic and its Discontents." Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, Paris (October 26-29, 2009).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. "History, an Exit Strategy: Race, Haunting, and Memory in kara lynch's Invisible." American Musicological Society, Nashville (November 6-9, 2008).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. “Conceptual Sound Forms: The Event, Action Music, and Performance-Sculpture, 1958-1980.” Performance Studies International, New York University (November 8-11, 2007).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. “Imagined States: Anna Friz’s Radio Utopias.” Feminist Theory and Music, Montreal (June 6-10, 2007).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. “Becoming Media: Post-War Electronic Music and the Politics of Informationalism.” Society for American Music. Eugene, Oregon (February 16-20, 2005).
Research Grants and Residencies
- Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Support for the Individual Artist Programme, Travel Award (2011)
- Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), 2 year Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (2008, declined due to accepting teaching post)
- Banff Centre for the Arts, Fellowship for Artist-In-Residence program (2007-08)
- UCSD Graduate Student Teaching Fellowship (2006)
- UCSD Center for Humanities, Dissertation Fellowship (2005)
- Canada Council for the Arts, Grants for Individual Artists (2004)
- UC Institute for the Arts, Special Projects Grant, co-recipient with Teknika Radica (2003)
- UCSD University Humanities Fellowship (2001-05)
Current PhD Students
Isobel Anderson
Steve Davis
Una Monaghan
Imogene Newland
Nicholas Ward
