Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
$10USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
• Limited edition vinyl record of 200pc in full color jacket
• Fold out double-sided 18” x 24” poster
• 9” x 4” card with graphic and credits
Includes unlimited streaming of Dafne Phono
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
ships out within 2 days
edition of 200
Purchasable with gift card
$30USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
LP + Book bundle (ltd. quantity available)
Book [published by Wendy's Subway]:
Softcover with jacket, 120 pp, 6.75 x 9 in
With a preface by the artist, libretti, and an essay by
Anahid Nersessian. Design by Scott Ponick
LP:
• Limited edition vinyl record of 200pc in full color jacket
• Fold out double-sided 18” x 24” poster
• 9” x 4” card with graphic and credits
Includes unlimited streaming of Dafne Phono
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Nour Mobarak’s Dafne Phono is an adaptation of the first opera, Dafne, composed and written by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini in 1598. Drawing on the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—a story of unrequited love, patriarchal possession, conquest, and transformation—Mobarak’s multimedia and multispecies reimagining splinters the opera’s Italian libretto. Alongside English and Greek versions, it is translated into some of the world’s most phonetically complex languages—Abkhaz, San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino, Silbo Gomero, and !Xoon. In this process, the narrative—and an artifact of Western culture—is dismantled, metabolized, and rendered into unruly utterances that shape the sensorium as much as they do the capacity for sense-making. These voices are given material form by a cast of mycelium sonic sculptures whose rhizomatic compositions and broadcasted recordings resemble the formation and mutation of language over time, reconstituting speech into a new, polyphonic body politic, composed of voices whose striking, poetic utterances transfix and transcend meaning.
The A-Side of the record presents a stereo version of Mobarak’s 15-channel sound installation, Dafne Phono. The B-Side uses a recording of a portion of the translation process the libretto underwent in Namibia, live-processed by the artist. Dafne Phono is released in tandem with a book of the same name, published by Wendy’s Subway [https://www.wendyssubway.com/].
A limited number of copies are available for bundled purchase with the book.
The LP and book are published on the occasion of Nour Mobarak’s exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (October 26, 2024–January 12, 2025), with support from Sylvia Kouvali.
• Limited edition vinyl record of 200pc in full color jacket
• Includes download code with high-res audio files
• Fold out double-sided 18” x 24” poster
• 9” x 4” card with graphic and credits
Artist Bio
Nour Pamela Mobarak (Lebanese-American, b. 1985, Cairo, Egypt) lives and works between Los Angeles; Bainbridge Island; and Athens, Greece. Her works have been shown at Sylvia Kouvali (formerly Rodeo), London/Piraeus; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Amant, Brooklyn; JOAN, Los Angeles; Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga; Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Hakuna Matata, Los Angeles; and Cubitt Gallery, London. Exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Castello di Tivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, are forthcoming. She has performed at Western Front, Vancouver; 2220, the Hammer Museum, and LAXART, Los Angeles; Cafe OTO, London; Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and elsewhere. Her music has been released by Recital (Los Angeles), Cafe OTO’s TakuRoku (London), and Ultra Eczema (Antwerp), and she has had sessions on BBC Radio 3, NTS Radio, and Dublab Radio. Mobarak’s writing has been published in Triple Canopy, F.R. David, The Claudius App, and the Salzburg Review, and her first catalog, Sphere Studies and Subterranean Bounce was published by Recital (2021). She has held residencies at Denniston Hill, New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and was the recipient of the 2023 FOCA fellowship award. Mobarak was a 2024 faculty at Bard College MFA program.
credits
released October 18, 2024
Vocalists:
Apollo: Renato Grieco (Italian)
Cupid: Arnou Argun (Abkhaz)
Dafne: Agnes | xaye (!Xoon)
Ovid: Olivia O’Dwyer (Latin)
Venus: Don Eugenio Darias (Silbo Gomero)
Abkhaz Chorus: Liana Ebzhnou, Murman Guaramia, Fatima Kharzalia, and Gunda Osia
Chatino Chorus: Felix Daniel Peña Mendes, José Vasquez Canseco, Catalina Candelario Matias, and Claudia Garcia Baltazar
!Xoon Chorus: Franco Tsame, John Djujui Klosi Barase, and Charity Tsame
Clarinet: Steve Kado
Libretto:
Original Italian libretto for Dafne written in 1598 by Ottavio Rinuccini
Italian translated by Tim Carter, Mattia Cappelletti, Francesca Fantappie, and Nour Mobarak
Abkhaz translated by Astan Kudzhba
Chatino translated by Emiliana Cruz and Claudia García Baltazar
Latin translated by Julian Thomas Ooi
Spanish for Silbo Gomero translated by Nahui Garcia
!Xoon translated by John Djujui Klosi Barase and Franco Tsame, with input from other denizens of Corridor 17, Namibia
Technicians:
Abkhaz Recorded by: Alexander Tsyamryuk
Silbo Gomero Recorded by: Dave Watts
!Xoon and Chatino Recorded by: Nour Mobarak
Latin Recorded by: Olivia O’Dwyer
Italian is recorded by Renato Grieco
Juliette Amoroso, sound engineer for post-production
Sean McCann, sound mixing and mastering
Artist Assistant for Dafne Phono: Sotiris Vougiatzis
Photography:
LP cover image of Nour Mobarak’s Dafne Phono installation by Rodeo at Municipal Theater of Pireaus, 2023, photo by Stathis Mamalakis
LP back-cover image by A.R. Faust
Poster image of Nour Mobarak’s Gods’ Facsimiles installation at Rodeo, London, 2023, photo by Deniz Guzel
Text poster image still from Dafne Phono installation subtitle video, 2022
Installation photos courtesy of Nour Mobarak and Sylvia Kouvali Gallery
Dafne Phono is a 15-channel sound, sculpture, and video installation by Nour Mobarak, mixed down to stereo for this Recital Program release. It was presented in its first installation form at JOAN in Los Angeles, California between June 30-August 27, 2022. It was presented by Rodeo (now Sylvia Kouvali) in Piraeus, Greece, in its iteration with mycelium sculptures at the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus between July 20 - September 16, 2023.
Dafne Phono is being presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 26, 2024 - January 12, 2025. Dafne Phono was commissioned, in part, by Rodeo (now Sylvia Kouvali) and JOAN. Some mycelium sculptures were created with the generous assistance of Dirfis Mushrooms in Evia, Greece. This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the Museum of Modern Art, the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, and by Dafne Phono’s dear friends. Thanks to Onassis AiR for generously lending recording equipment, and also Genelec, MorrowSound, and Recital Program. Thanks to Sotiris Vougiatzis for assisting the artist during the entire production of this work. Thanks to everyone who helped in the three years of the monumental production of Dafne Phono. The list is too long to print here. Additional thanks to: Sylvia Kouvali, Sophie Cavoulacos who organized the show at MoMA, Hannah Spears from JOAN, Sean McCann of Recital, Rachel Valinsky of Wendy’s Subway, and Alden and Fox Mackey.
what should have been originally released. the lo-fi nature works wonderfully in the record's favor... feels very natural. bailey plays off of the backing quite nicely! james
Improvisational pieces that blossom into moments of melody and cover topics such as “voltage & how certain apples will keep you young.” Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 18, 2023
Colin Andrew Sheffield (Elevator Bath) repurposes heavily manipulated jazz samples into gorgeously eerie soundscapes. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 20, 2023
This goes crazy. Never heard something like this. What an experience and definitely opened and inspired my creative eyes, ears, body, and soul abstractshine
