Jessika Khazrik (born & raised in Beirut, based in Berlin & Beirut)

is an artist, composer, technologist, educatress and DJ whose indisciplinary practice ranges from machine learning to performance, steganography, visual art, philosophy of intelligence and history of science and music. Khazrik works with a trans-millennial production of knowledge based on an environmental understanding of the techno-politics of voice, media, and code. While probing the unity of science and the multi-dimensionality of experience in an age that institutes separation, her indisciplinary practice revolves around the collective search and need for polymathic resonance in the 20th-21st centuries and long-term future. She holds BAs in Linguistics and in Theatre from the Lebanese University(LB) and a MS in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT(US) where she was awarded the Ada Lovelace prize.

♦️ Music ↭ Sound ↭ Sculpture ♦️

 

Astrophysical, hyperbodily and alchemical, Jessika Khazrik’s live musical practice is deeply devoted to communal solace, collective transcendence and trans-generational healing. With genre- defying mercurial treatments of voice, drums and space, her sonic scapes intimately investigate the ecological and techno-political premises of continua we inhabit, co-create or forget. Concocting scores from trans-millennial compendia of healing, space and biosensing technologies and on-site/online detritus, her live and hybrid sets are deeply informed by ancestral chanting traditions – like Armenian sharakan, Levantine mawwal and Iraqi radh – skewed with a quaint techno and incomputable entrancing rhythms.

 

Jessika Khazrik’s hyperbodily, techno-political and literary practice nurtures a multiplicity of voices, assemblies and histories. Performing internationally in a wide range of spaces from clubs to museums, the world wide web, theatres and quarries, she festively uses spaces of congregation to search for locally entrenched universalisms that could collectively respond to the dystopias of our times. In parallel to exhibiting and performing live, teaching speech synthesis and voice-based electronic music production, and producing multi-channel sound installations, Khazrik also composes scores for film, video games and performances and writes about science, cosmology and music. 

 

Khazrik has toured her solo music internationally, including at ALL(CN, 2018), Ballroom Blitz(LB, 2019), CTM Festival(DE, 2020), Haus der Kulturen der Welt(DE, 2018), ICA Boston(US, 2015), Les Urbaines(CH, 2018),Rewire Festival(NL, 2021), SONICA Festival(SI, 2021), Supersonic Festival(UK, 2022), Takseer Festival(DE, 2022) and Theater Der Welt(DE, 2014), among others. Her multi-channel sound installations and lenticular sculptures have been commissioned by and exhibited at ar/ ge kunst(IT, 2020), Kunsthalle Wien(AT, 2020), LACE(US, 2017), LUMA Foundation(CH, 2017), Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi(PL, 2022), Para Site(HK, 2021) and SAVVY Contemporary(DE, 2019), among others.

 

 

Recent artist features and interviews

⚭ 'Super Short Short-Term Ecstasy After Super Short-term Collapse: An interview with Jessika Khazrik' @ SHAPE Platform ⚭

⚭ ‘Never Confined to One Space: How Jessika Khazrik is fixing the future through techno’@ Mixmag Magazine ⚭

⚭  ‘Music Reminds me of Universes to Come: A conversation with Jessika Khazrik on rhythm,technology

and the environment’ @ Cover feature for Ballroom Express ⚭

⚭ Conversation With Johanna Hedva @ Amplify Berlin ⚭

⚭ ‘Why Beirut Is Going through a Revolution in Electronic Sound @ Redbull Magazine ⚭

 

⚭ The Art of Collavoration: Live conversation with Gazelle Twin & NYX @ Supersonic Festival ⚭

⚭ Cashmere Radio w/ Folly Ghost ⚭

 

 

 

 

♦️ Science ↭ Technology ↭Writing ♦️

 

Jessika Khazrik's essays and short stories have been published in over 5 languages in edited anthologies and multiple publications like Bidayat Journal(LB, 2015), e-flux(US, 2022), Zweikommasieben(CH,2021), MadaMasr(EG, 2023), Kohl Journal(LB, 2015,-16,-23), Funambulist(FR,2017,-21) and Ibraaz(US,2017) to name a few. Her indisciplinary research-based work has been presented at the Stanford Research Institute(US, 2017), the Arab Image Foundation(LB,2016), Birbeck’s School of Law at UCL(UK, 2019), Center for Documentary Arts and Research at UCSC(US, 2016) and Amnesty International(UK & DE, 2019), among others. Khazrik has been an artist fellow at Home Workspace Programme(2012-13), Digital Earth(2018-19), HfK Bremen(2020) and SHAPE Platform(2021-22) and is at present  a fellow at the Helmholtz Center (2022-23) and a member of the Sound Lab for Fluid Ways of Knowing. As visiting faculty, she has taught voice-based electronic music, performance and techno-politics at  HfK Bremen(DE, 2020), the FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel(CH, 2021-22), the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg(DE, 2022-23) and guest lectured internationally. As technologist, she has worked on AI policy and digital rights trans-continentally and is the founder of the techno-study group ‘قراءة الحواسيب READING COMPUTERS’, the peer- to-peer web platform and study;strategy;solidarity group ‘POST-CORONIALISM’ and the online transclusive research platform ‘خريطة الظلام Cartography of Darkness’. Having grown up around a quarry contaminated with toxic waste, she has been active in struggles for environmental justice since early adolescence.

 

 

 

Online publications of scripts from my voice-based performances

 

⚭ ‘Songs from Nano-Spectacular Space’ published by E-flux (2022) ⚭

 

⚭ ‘حقلٌ في أكوام القمامة ٢’ published by the feminist journal Kohl (2023) ⚭

 

⚭ 'Mount Mound Refuse II' published by the feminist journal Kohl (2023) ⚭

 

⚭ 'VRLAMXXAB8ND' published by Kunsthalle Wien (2020) ⚭

 

⚭ ‘حقلٌ في أكوام القمامة’ published by the feminist journal Kohl ⚭

 

⚭ 'Mount Mound Refuse I' published by the feminist journal Kohl (2016) ⚭