Student profile

Angus Tarnawsky

Thesis supervisor: Owen Chapman

Faculty

Angus Tarnawsky is an artist, musician, curator and researcher, currently based in London (UK).

As an artist and musical improviser, he has worked extensively with lathe cut records and dubplates, often through site-specific and place-responsive performances, installations, workshops, recordings and other archival practices. As a curator, he has released a wide range of experimental audio works on his label, In Context Music (ICM).

As a PhD candidate at Concordia University (Tiohtià:ke/Montréal), he investigates the social and political dimensions of hearing and listening in urban spaces. Several phases of this work are documented in the recent book chapter, “What do I hear, and how do I listen? Thinking with sound on the Lachine Canal” as part of Palgrave Macmillan's edited volume, “Sound Research for Troubling Times.”

Thesis title: Sonic Encounters on the Lachine Canal and Lee Navigation

Publications, writings and/or artwork:

Pocket. Metaphors in Music and Sound, edited by Nina Eidsheim, Dylan Robinson, J. Martin Daughtry, and Daniel Walden. Duke University Press, 2026 (In Press).
What do I Hear, and How do I listen? Thinking with Sound on the Lachine Canal. Sound Research for Troubling Times, edited by Jessie Beier and Owen Chapman. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
Habits of Listening: Encounters with Sound Art in Urban Spaces. Performance Research 28, no. 6 (2023): 57–58.
Nothing to Hear, So to Speak: Spaces of Sounding and Listening at 100 McCaul Street. The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory 2, no. 2, Special Issue: Sound, Colonialism and Power (November 2021): 53–62.
Variable Frequencies: A Sound Installation Investigating Process and Interaction. Panic at the Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal, UnDisciplined Special Issue (2020): 55–61.

Recent Performances:

Dub Navigation (no. 1): A sonic encounter featuring hydrophone and contact mic recordings made in-and-around the Lee Navigation (a canal in Hackney, London) “re-performed” using locked groove dubplates (amplified via a portable sound system). The Middlesex Filter Beds, London, UK, July 19, 2025.

Unheard Freqs (Live at Phi): Multimedia performance w/ the Very Low Frequency Dub Collective, featuring electromagnetic sound sources, direct-to-disc recording, dub processing, audio remixing and “scratch” visuals for Rirkrit Tiravanija’s untitled 1996 (rehearsal studio no. 6). Phi Foundation, Montréal, QC, Feb 23, 2024.

Social media links:

Websites: https://angustarnawsky.com; incontextmusic.com