Audio Foundation

By The Auckland Psychogeographer

Somewhere on the borderline between installation art, experimental music and radical performance, the Audio Foundation is a long-standing presenter and promoter of avant-garde culture in Auckland – and indeed around the country – as well as being a vigorously active gallery and performance space.

Hosting dozens of sound-art installations every year – frequently from international exhibitors – the Audio Foundation also maintains a large-scale programme of adventurous and underground performance both in its own basement venue and in new spaces everywhere. The AF forms a crucial role in the network of radical culture in New Zealand, sustaining the work of artists whose material might typically ask uncomfortable questions, or be poorly-suited to galleries, concert halls or straight music venues.

Often the installations and presentations resemble gleefully obtuse sound-sculpture, consist of politically conscious slabs of noise, or freely jumble the boundaries between technologies, idioms and ideas.

As a promoter, the Audio Foundation frequently presents and arranges national tours for experimental performers from the US, Europe and Asia – recent touring acts include American sculptor and musician Lonnie Holley, legendary jazz titan Peter Brötzmann and high-volume noise artist Puce Mary – and remains a robust voice for touring initiatives by local artists. The present director is avant-jazz musician Jeff Henderson.