Éliane Radigue: States of Listening

For over six decades, Éliane Radigue composed subtly pulsating, extended sound works by experimenting with infinitesimal alterations in the sonic material itself. Her radical innovations across acoustic and electronic music are united by an enduring interest in carefully controlled low frequencies and the morphing effects resulting from their asynchronous diffusion. Emerging from the French musique concrète scene, whose practitioners sought to make music from real-world sounds, Radigue’s early feedback works consisted of short tape loops of slightly unequal length that desynchronized over time, resulting in extended tonalities that are infinitely nuanced by their recombination. Her pioneering synthesizer works, inflected by Eastern metaphysics and often realized in conversation with Minimalist peers in the United States, occupied Radigue from the 1970s through the early 2000s, when she began composing for acoustic instruments and performers. This presentation restages the in-gallery sonic installations that Radigue created at the turn of the 1970s, alongside live performances of her synthesizer and acoustic works. Program details to be announced in spring 2026.

Éliane Radigue: States of Listening is curated by Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, curator and co–department head, with Ella den Elzen, curatorial assistant.

Éliane Radigue was born in Paris in 1932. After working with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, French musique concrète composers, her early experiments with feedback-generated sounds and tape loops gave way, in the 1970s, to compositions realized with the ARP 2500 synthesizer, first during residencies in the United States, then at her home studio in Paris. In 2004, Radigue began collaborating with acoustic instrumentalists to compose more than 30 works to date. A survey of her 1960s sound installations was presented at Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, in 1972, and her compositions for synthesizers debuted at Experimental Intermedia and the Kitchen, both New York, the following year. Her work has since been presented internationally. Recent anthologies include Feedback Works 1969–1970 , released by Alga Marghen in 2012, and Œuvres électroniques (Electronic works), released by INA Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 2018. Éliane Radigue: Intermediary Spaces , an extended interview with Julia Eckhardt, was published in 2019, and the comprehensive monograph Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue was published by Blank Forms in 2025. Radigue died in Paris in 2026.