Abbas Zahedi’s new work Waiting With {Sonic Support} will play host to an Open Mic each day of the fair. Located beside the entrance to Frieze in Regent’s Park, Abbas’ structure will be activated by performances between 12-16 October 2022, 3-4:30pm (LONDON) | 10-11:30am (EASTERN)
Frieze named Abbas Zahedi as the winner of the 2022 Frieze Artist Award, realized in partnership with Forma for the fourth consecutive year. Established in 2013, the award provides an emerging artist with the platform to debut an ambitious new commission on the occasion of Frieze London. Previous recipients of the Frieze Artist Award include Himali Singh Soin (2019), Alberta Whittle (2020) and Sung Tieu (2021).
Waiting With {Sonic Support}, 2022, is a prototype for a new form of civic infrastructure; conflating multiple sites: a bus stop - more generally, a public waiting area - a DIY bandstand, and a public support space. Responding to the particularities of Frieze London, Abbas Zahedi’s site-sensitive installation activates the fair’s threshold, to establish a speculative transport system for utopian daydreaming between its inside and outside.
Developed from Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of bus stops as places to ‘achieve practical and theoretical participation in common being’, one first encounters Waiting With {Sonic Support} whilst approaching Frieze London. Echoing the form of a Central Asian Soviet-Era bus stop, Abbas’ co-designed waiting zone is a site of ensemble; a place where one can depart from the isolated individuality of our contemporary age - Sartre’s ‘plurality of isolations’ - by convening with others in a common interconnected space.
During Frieze London, this temporary structure will serve as a ‘metatopian’ performative environment, that hosts a number of open mic activations. Selected through an open submissions process, these open mics not only extend a gesture of conviviality to other artists and performers but allude to Abbas’ early creative practice as an emcee, spoken-word poet and community organiser. Embracing the legacies of DIY and pirate radio, each of these open-mic ensembles will be broadcast live into the heart of the Frieze London tent. Here, an indoor version of the installation will allow those inside to tune into the active space outside.
