Abstract Turntablism - Maria Chavez

On Friday 23 October 2026 at 10:00 pm, Xing presents Abstract Turntablism at Raum in Bologna, a sound performance by Maria Chavez, experimental turntablist, sound artist and DJ, and one of the leading figures in the most radical approaches to the art of ‘playing’ the turntable on the New York scene (alongside Christian Marclay and Marina Rosenfeld).

Her practice, poised between sound and noise, crosses different languages, from sound to the visual arts.

Abstract Turntablism offers Italian audiences a rare opportunity to hear Maria Chavez perform her innovative practice of impro turntablism, centred on the connections between material and temporal failure and experimentation with vinyl records. In her live performances, the artist acts as a bricoleur of intricate, cerebral and unpredictable soundscapes, constructed through improvised sampling. At Raum, she will use four turntables and her constantly evolving collection of scratched and broken vinyl records, across which the needles slide, click and skip.

With Chavez, hypnotic loops extracted from sound-test records, sound-effects compilations, spoken-word albums and countless other sources never resolve into catchy melodic or rhythmic hooks: instead, they jam or fade into worlds of static noise, celebrating the aesthetics of chance. In all her projects, Chavez explores the connections between tactility, perception and ideation, starting from the material phenomenon of the needle - or ‘sound pencil’ - tracing the vinyl, drawing sound through contact and setting matter into vibration, thus opening new paths for the imagination. Chavez invites us not so much to listen to her as to listen with her, as we reconstruct possible connections in the aftermath of the social and political traumas of recent years and anticipate future sonic worlds.

"I consider sound the most democratic medium among art forms"