Joseph Kay is a composer, sound artist and performer, born in Germany in 1992. His work, which has been shown and played in venues around Europe, in Japan, and in Brazil, explores the intersection of noise and queerness: what noise is, what noise does // how noise queers things, how queerness makes things noisy. These questions have led him away from the concert hall and into spaces that speak and hear differently – theatres, dance studios, galleries, fields.
He completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2019, undertaking research on the ecological functions of noise in Helmut Lachenmann’s musique concrète instrumentale, Artaud’s poetics, and the semiotics of action-based notation. Studying under the supervision of Martyn Harry and Eric Clarke, his work was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as scholarships from St Anne’s and Wadham Colleges. Recent projects include an ongoing creative partnership with dancers/choreographers Estela Merlos and Thomasin Gülgeç a collaboration with poet Alice Oswald, typographer Kevin Mount, and filmmaker Rocio Chacon, and a piece written in collaboration with composer Stevie Wishart, commissioned by Concertgebouw Brugge. He works freelance in London and is always interested to hear from new collaborators.
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