© 2017 Robert Poss
Susan Stenger is a sound artist whose practice transcends boundaries. An accomplished flautist and specialist in performing the music of John Cage, Christian Wolff and Phill Niblock, she was also a co-founding member (with longtime ally Robert Poss) of wall-of-guitars group Band Of Susans and instigator of all-bass art band Big Bottom. Stenger has toured as a guitarist with Rhys Chatham and as a bassist with The Creatures, John Cale and Nick Cave and has collaborated with an eclectic range of artists in addition to Poss, including dancer/choreographer Michael Clark, writers Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, scrap-metal percussionist FM Einheit and visual artist Cerith Wyn Evans. In 2006 she was commissioned by curator Mathieu Copeland to make an exhibition-length sound installation for Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, which became the 96-day-long Soundtrack for an Exhibition and explored song form on multiple levels of genre, time and detail. In 2011 she composed music for Pat Collins' film Tim Robinson: Connemara, a documentary about the renowned writer and cartographer. Stenger's soundtrack was based on a study of Irish sean nós singing, the Connemara landscape, and a close reading of Robinson's work. As part of Newcastle's AV Festival, Stenger's sound work Full Circle inhabited the domed entrance to the Civic Centre in March 2012 and was subsequently presented in Toronto and Stockholm. Her 2014 AV installation, Sound Strata of Coastal Northumberland, transformed the geologic into the sonic using an 1838 cross-section geological diagram as a graphic score, layering instrumental sounds, melodic patterns and signature rhythms from Northumbrian folk music and dance. Sound Strata toured the Northumberland coast throughout 2015 and resulted in a 96-page full-colour publication with CD soundstrata.co.uk. Stenger recently collaborated with Jesse Jones and Olwen Fouéré on Tremble, Tremble, creating the soundtrack for Jones' multimedia work featuring Fouéré that represented Ireland at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
A more detailed biography can be downloaded here.
PHILL NIBLOCK: FOUR FULL FLUTES
1990 (Experimental Intermedia)
MUSIC BY PHILL NIBLOCK
G2, 44+ / X2
2000 (Moikai)
POSS / STENGER: DECONSTRUCT
1994 (various artists) (Blast First/Disobey)
1999 (various artists) (Candy Records)
RUDE MECHANIC
1999 (various artists) (Piano)
GILBERTPOSSSTENGER
2000 (WMO)
THE SECRET LIFE OF THE LOVE SONG/ THE FLESH MADE WORD: TWO LECTURES
2000 (King Mob)
2008 (various artists) (Fractured Recordings)
SOUND / SILENCE
2011 (various artists) (Musique Couture)
SHIRLEY INSPIRED
2015 (various artists) (Earth)
SUSAN STENGER
BAND OF SUSANS