Announcing: Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs-Up, the debut record under my chosen name, out now on Oxtail Recordings.
SPIN Magazine Review
METAL Magazine Interview
Struma + Iodine Review
15 Questions Interview
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Ariadne Randall is an American artist, composer, and writer based in Vienna. Her work practices worldbuilding through transmedia narrative. Through strategies of material depth and formal juxtaposition, she creates spaces for imagination in sound, language, and image. She holds degrees in classical composition and contemporary art from UCLA and Bard MFA. Her work has been heard widely, from Lincoln Center and a recent song cycle for the Vienna Volksoper to countless basements; been a part of work featured in the BBC, CNN, and Artforum; and participated in the SPRING, ImageTanz, and Musiktheatertage festivals. Her Reverse Cowgirl Trilogy rides her gender transition towards larger questions of identity and becoming; its second chapter features McKenzie Wark, among others, and will premiere at brut wien in 2025. The trilogy’s first chapter, Reverse Cowgirl β (Beta), premiered at the same house in 2023 through the Huggy Bears mentorship program. Her debut record under her chosen name, Her Water Dream / Image of a Blue Thumbs-Up, was released in 2024 on Oxtail Recordings and received a rare ‘A’ rating from SPIN magazine; it is the first release in the Here Is Always Vanishing series, a lifework centering recorded sound. She is represented by Galerie Peter Gaugy.
“Ariadne Randall’s dreamy environments are lovingly furnished with her voice, her movements, and her compositions. Inspired by Butoh and opera, the artist seeks to find linkages and slippages between the so-called natural and digital worlds, applying the trans* experience and its fluidity to look at other liminalities such as birth, death, crisis or spirituality.”
– LAURA AMANN, CURATOR, KUNSTHALLE WIEN
The child of a traveling apocalyptic evangelist and a Gospel singer who roamed America’s Bible Belt, her practice is rooted in a fusion of influences derived from Zen kōans, low theory, postwar American experimentalism, Medieval aural and visual forms, contemporary digital culture, and poetry. She previously lived in New York City, where she organized underground venues, zines, and radio. Her scores for theater and film have been shown in New York, Hollywood, London, Canada, and South Korea. Her writing has been published in Prelude Magazine and elsewhere. She is an Austrian National Residency Fellow for Music (BMKÖS), was a research assistant in ancient music at UCLA, and spent ten years in Rinzai Zen training.
She has worked with Rosa Anschütz, Via App, Ólafur Arnalds, Genevieve Belleveau, Anastasia Clarke, Dreamcrusher, Eartheater, Matt Evans, Filous, Filly, Golden Vessel, Asa Horvitz, Wayne Horvitz, Beta Librae, Tallesen, Amirtha Kidambi, Tristan Kasten-Krause, Beta Librae, Robert Ponger (Falco), Anna Roberts-Gevalt (Anna & Elizabeth), Carmen Quill (Carmen Q. Rothwell), Colin Self, Rebecca Fin Simonetti, Molly Soda, Umfang, Trevor Wilson & Vocal Ensemble, VALES, and posted in The Jogging.
She has shared the stage with Show Me The Body, Blood Orange, Daniel Carter, Che Chen, Christeene, Dan Deacon, Huerco S., Colin Fisher, Guardian Alien, Guerrilla Toss, Sarah Kinlaw, Muyassar Kurdi, Monica Mirabile, Oneida, M. Geddes Gengras, Gut Nose, Adrian Knight, Pictureplane, A Place To Bury Strangers, Ratking, Ben Seretan, Azuria Sky, Tallesen, Weeping Icon, and Ziemba, among others.
Notable venues include 285 Kent, the Brick, Brut Wien, Bowery Poetry Club, Cell Project Space, Daytrotter Sessions, Danspace Project, DAS Theatre, De School, DeSingel, Het HEM, Flux Factory, La Fonderie Darling, Lincoln Center, Glasslands, HERE Arts Center, ISSUE Project Room, Montez Press Radio, Joshua Tree National Park, Knockdown Center, KPFA, Microscope Gallery, Para Site, Park Church Co-Op, PCCC, Phoenix Theatre, The Royal Room, SculptureCenter, The Silent Barn, Trans-Pecos, the Vienna Volksoper, and WFMU.