Christopher Willes

Biography

Christopher Willes (b. 1986) is an artist, composer/musician, researcher, and dramatuge based in so-called Canada. His artistic work focuses on practices of listening, and is developed through an approach that blends sonic, material, embodied, and collaborative processes. He creates interdisciplinary performances, concert music, audio installation and sound walks, exhibitions, publications, and web-based works, while also organizing workshops, community-engaged initiative, curatorial projects and other experimental gatherings. His work has been presented in festivals, galleries, concert halls, museums, and public spaces across Canada, the USA, the UK, Europe, and Japan. He holds a Bachelor of Music (University of Toronto) and an MFA (Bard College, USA) and has trained as a dance dramaturge (Metcalf Foundation / Dancemakers). He is a Chalmers Arts Fellow (CAN), a MacDowell Fellow (USA), and an affiliated researcher at the Milieux Institute of Concordia University. At present, Christopher is currently completing studies in Conflict Mediation at the University of Waterloo.

Christopher’s projects emerge through long-term collaborations and often take unconventional forms. With Adam Kinner he co-created MANUAL, a one-on-one performance that is staged covertly within public libraries. MANUAL premiered at OFFTA (Montreal) in 2022 and has since continued to tour internationally. Since 2014, he has developed numerous projects with Public Recordings, including Resonance Gathering, a collectively authored publication on the work of Pauline Oliveros (Art Metropole, 2023). As a composer, sound designer, and dramaturge, he has worked in experimental dance and theatre for over a decade, with projects presented at Festival TransAmériques (Montéal), PuSH Festival (Vancouver), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), Sound Live Tokyo (Japan), and more. Active in experimental and improvised music since the mid-2000s, he performs on wind instruments, synthesizers, and electronics while also composing with various groups.

A significant part of Christopher’s practice is dedicated to organizing educational workshops and community-engaged projects. He has taught courses on collaborative practice, interdisciplinary performance, and experimental music at institutions including Studio 303 (Montreal), the Toronto Dance Community Love-In, the University of Toronto, Concordia University (Montreal), Tramway (UK), Betonsalon (France), and more. From 2017 to 2023, he was a recurring artist-in-residence at The Toronto Public Library where he created performances and led experimental music workshops with teenagers and seniors in Scarborough. With Public Recordings he developed What’s Collective?, a peer-based research project and workshop exploring collective art practices, shared internationally from 2019 to 2024. For the past few years, he has led Asking Through Scores, an annual five-day intensive at Studio 303 exploring the role of scores in collaborative processes.

Contact:
info@christopherwilles.com
Instagram: @christopherwilles