Rachel Austin
Artist Fellow, Exhibiting Artist
Rachel Austin (she/they) Queering the lines between singer, improviser, and performance artist, Rachel Austin balances playfulness with obsession. They muddy the binaries of mistake and perfection forced by pop culture and empire. In their electronic avant-opera, Rags to Riches (2019), Austin toys with the desirability of the American Dream. Processing her voice and pre-recorded samples as she sings and reads snippets of celebrity success stories. Austin resists polarization by combining satire with reverence. With this sense of absurdity, the task of aiming for a polished electroacoustic number becomes a metaphor for the futility of chasing wealth. As a queer artist with intense sensory processing sensitivity, Austin finds it easy to read the room and sense how far she can push the audience. Serving as the springboard for ritual, she sets an intention with each performance. She aims to ground both herself and viewers in empathic resonances and thrive on the give-and-take between herself and the audience, whether that is through obvious verbal conversation or by absorbing subtle emotional and physical shifts. When working with dancers at Urban Arts Space (Columbus, 2022), Austin listened to the reverberation of the cavernous gallery. She translated the performers’ movement into sound and noticed how the audience’s curiosity and attention shifted in the immersive performance space. As she opens and becomes a vessel, she sees where the audience is and takes them where they need to go. Originally from Augusta County, Rachel lived in Northern Ireland for over a decade and has performed across Europe and the US with the transformance art collective ikon with Pádraig Ó Tuama and Pete Rollins. She has performed as a vocalist with Kronos Quartet, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Duke Special, the Irish Symphony Orchestra, and others. Austin has completed residencies throughout the US, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Mexico. She holds a BA in Electronic Composition (Mills College, Oakland) and an MFA in Performance and Performance Studies (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn). Austin loves singing and is also a singer-songwriter.
Bio courtesy of the artist.
During their Fellowship, Rachel will record and create a sound composition using the pitches that are most common in the Visible Records building, and conclude with an interactive performance on empathy.
