In his book Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot, Mark Vanhoenacker writes, “The truth that air is as substantive as concrete remains as counterintuitive as any of science’s most inscrutable revelations.” The sound artist Thessia Machado makes a similar statement: “Working with sound allows me to think of the air in which we all swim as yet another malleable and responsive, physical material,” she has said. Machado is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. We met up with her on a rainy afternoon to photograph and discuss her new installation “Telix,” which will open in the gallery SOMOS here on May 17.

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Unlimited access to our
weekly issues and archives.

Already have an account?

Login here

… has been an editor at VAN since 2015. He’s the author of The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (Boydell & Brewer), and his journalism has appeared in The Baffler, the New York...