Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

Whether with chisel, cast shadow, clouds of ink, or the towline of a kite, my practice investigates the intersections of place, materiality, and projection to question axioms of architectural imagination and construction. Some of my projects seek the simultaneity of assembly and disassembly, object and drawing, quarry and site. Others misuse techniques of land surveying and marine navigation as archetypal forms of architectural projection, or create new musical instruments and practices aimed at attunement with the atmosphere. My proto-architectural practice in drawing, sculpture, installation, instrument-making, and performance explores the indeterminate zone of ruins, episodic spaces, and sites of suspended construction, seeking to understand and reframe relationships between self and environment. 

While at Headlands

I will bring some of the musical instruments developed for the Kite Choir, Walking Harps, and Atmospheric Listening Station projects to Headlands, with parts for adjustments and new ones. The environment is always the actual, vital body of these aeolian instruments. I hope to spend most of my time in the environment of Headlands in performance with them. I would love for some of these performances to become collaborative or collective. I hope to make enough hand-held aeolian harps to have a field or flock of them there, ready to map the flows and eddies of the atmosphere in sound.

Firat Erdim, Kite Choir Sounding: June 9, 2019, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. Electric hurdy-gurdy reel.

Firat Erdim, Atmospheric Listening Station (SQHAP); 2020; single-string double resonator aeolian harp installed on existing flagpole at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park (Cazenovia, NY); on-site installation and maintenance by Beth, John, and Sayward Schoonmaker; video and audio recording by Sayward Schoonmaker.

Firat Erdim, Paula Matthusen, and Olivia Valentine, LoomRoomHarp 090221 (opening day), 2021; track mixed from multiple recordings from the opening performance of LOOM – ROOM – HARP, a collaborative installation and series of performances at Drake University’s Anderson Gallery (September-October, 2021). Track by Paula Matthusen.