Withholding | Senem Pirler at Silo City
Friday, September 4, 7 pm
@ Silo City (85 Silo City Row, Buffalo, NY 14203)
Free or suggested donation; register below
Join us at Silo City for a site-specific audiovisual performance at Silo City’s Marine A, titled Withholding. The performance positions inflatable sonic sculptures in the Silo, utilizing the structure’s concrete visual and acoustic elements, along with live modular synthesis and visuals that draw from histories of labor and extraction. This multi-sensory structure asks audiences to experience the silo not as a ruin but as an entity with ongoing memory and political charge, interrogating the architecture of capitalism through the bodies it has used and abandoned. This work continues Pirler’s explorations into how haptically engaged sonic sculptures can turn abstract concepts into embodied experiences.
The event will take place at Silo City. Entrance will be through the garden of Duende (85 Silo City Row, Buffalo, NY 14203) at 7 pm. This event marks the final event with our summer residents. Special thank you to Sara Heidinger and our partners at Silo City.
About the artist and our partner
Senem Pirler (she/her) is a sound and intermedia artist, sonic improviser, and educator. Her interdisciplinary practice spans installation, performance, audiovisual essay, and spatial electroacoustic composition, rooted in Deep Listening, feminist methodologies, and improvisation as a research method—making knowledge by engaging and listening with the material, simultaneously a witness and a participant. Born in Turkey, she earned her M.M. in Music Technology from NYU Steinhardt and her Ph.D. in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She has performed at EMPAC, Roulette, Carnegie Hall, the LA Philharmonic, Akademie der Künste, Southbank Center, Mabou Mines, Elastic Arts, MIT Museum, and others. Her work has been supported by LMCC, Harvestworks, PACT Zollverein, Signal Culture, and EMS Stockholm. Pirler was awarded an NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in the Music/Sound category in 2022, and the Malcolm Morse Award, honoring the work of Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening, in 2018. Dr. Pirler joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Composition.
Silo City is a unique post-industrial landscape comprised of the world’s largest collection of historical grain elevators. We create and host happenings on site through our 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that operates under the legal name Friends of Silo City. Click here to learn more.
