Artist Talk: Victoria Shen

Shen's practice is concerned with the materiality of sound and its relationship to the human body through a lens of disruption and experimentation. She creates and manipulates custom-built sculptures and extensions specific to her body to challenge conventional methods of sound production and erode the boundaries between performer, tool, and audience.

Eschewing conventions in harmony and rhythm in favor of extreme textures and gestural tones, Shen uses what she calls "chaotic sound" to oppose signal and information, eluding traditionally embedded meaning. Her work resists passive consumption. Instead, the body as both subject and instrument, using movement and tactility to provoke visceral, often confrontational encounters with sound. Her performances are deliberately physical, unpredictable, and ephemeral—rejecting polish in favor of raw immediacy.

Through a discursive practice spanning sound, performance, installation, sculpture, and non-traditional means of distribution, themes of spectacle, violence, control, and gender are interrogated. The intention is not to comfort or entertain, but to destabilize: to push systems, tools, and traditions until they reveal something unexpected.

This program is in collaboration with MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) and Non-Event.

About the Speaker

Shen has performed solo across North America, Japan, China, Mexico, Australia/NZ, the UK, and Europe, as a member of the turntable trio with Mariam Rezaei and Maria Chavez, as a member of hip hop group 1 Above Minus Underground. Shen has also collaborated with Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys, Keiji Haino, the Kronos Quartet, Matmos, clipping, Acid Mothers Temple, and Mike Watt. Some notable venues in which she has performed include Boston City Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room NY, DOMMUNE Tokyo, Petreon Sculpture Park Cyprus, MUNCH Museum Oslo, Art Gallery of NSW Sydney, and Museo d'Arte Orientale Turin. Shen has also been an artist in residence at Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm SE, WORM Rotterdam NL, EMPAC Troy US, Yaddo Saratoga Springs US, Kurimanzutto New York US, The Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen DK, and AUDIUM San Francisco US, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Omaha US, and Headlands Center for the Arts Sausalito US, and Audio Foundation Auckland NZ.

Shen has taught at Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics Stanford, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard, and the School of Visual Arts NY. Shen is also a serving member of the Board of Directors for The Lab in San Francisco.

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