NAThalie miebach

In response to a new sculpture based on California’s recent extreme weather.

at ica CENTRAL balboa park

COMMUNITY SERIES EVENT: NOV 23 2024 → INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRAL

Project [BLANK] will join the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego in Balboa Park for Restless Waters, an exhibition of sculptures by Nathalie Miebach. Her sculptures transform complex weather data into intricate visual art, capturing the human experience of natural disasters. Through her data-driven approach, she creates a dynamic dialogue between the scientific and the personal.

For this unique concert, featuring five world-premiere performances, Project [BLANK] has partnered with local composer and frequent collaborator Natalia Merlano Gómez to craft a series of compositions directly inspired by Miebach’s sculptures. The works feature solo voice, electronics, and a small chamber ensemble, blending intricate soundscapes with the emotional depth of the human voice and delicate, semi-improvised sonic textures. Each composition, developed in response to Miebach’s visualizations of extreme weather patterns, brings these statistical and sculptural elements to life through music, offering audiences a multisensory exploration of the devastating impact of climate change and the hope of human resilience.

Performers include Natalia Merlano Gómez and Jonathan Nussman (voice), Teresa Díaz de Cossia (flute), and David Aguila (trumpet).

The performance is FREE, but you must reserve your ticket in advance.

2-dimensional score for “Ian and Nicole,” which will be realized at the Nov. 23 performance.

3-dimensional sculture of “Ian and Nicole,” which is on view at the ICA @ Balboa Park.

nathalie miebach, sculptor

Nathalie Miebach (b.1972, Zeven, Germany, lives Boston, MA) foregrounds the human relationship to data in her meticulously researched practice. Using basket-weaving techniques to transform a variety of material into sculpture, wall installations, and 2D weavings, Miebach has devised her own visual languages to describe our reciprocal relationship with data.  

Working most often with weather data, each material in her work corresponds to a different datapoint, giving form to the human experience of catastrophic events such as hurricanes and the Covid-19 pandemic. Miebach takes an expansive approach to her data sets, incorporating anecdotal information–such as the number of sunny days in a month, her own mask-wearing comfort levels, and tweets from disaster zones–to create a more comprehensive and personal record of these experiences. For Restless Waters, Miebach’s  first exhibition in San Diego, she will produce a new sculpture based on California’s recent extreme weather. 

Working in collaboration with local experimental music organization Project BLANK, Miebach will develop a musical score  based on this new work of art to be performed on November 23 as part of PST ART (formerly known as Pacific  Standard Time), presented by Getty.

NATALIA MERLANO GOMEZ, composer / performer

Musician, singer, vocalist, improviser, and creator. She has been captivated by experimental music, worldwide folk music, improvisation, graphical notation, explorations with electronic devices, and extended vocal sounds. Additionally, she is curious about theatrical performance and explorations around video and photography.

She earned an M.A. in Contemporary Music - Singing at Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, being part of different multidisciplinary projects combining music, theater, dance, literature, and visual arts. Yielding good results, she did her undergraduate program at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas in Bogota, Colombia. She is pursuing a Doctorate in Music Arts at the University of California San Diego.

Since 2009, she has premiered many works by composers worldwide and commissioned new pieces. In 2021, she presented her first album called Resonancias Entrelazadas. It includes 15 works written by female composers and improvisations with female performers. Also, in 2022, she premiered the project CINCO with audiovisual pieces by Latin American composers written primarily for her.

DONATE TO
SUPPORT US

Any amount helps us achieve our goals! We are grateful for your patronage and support.