Adrian Wood

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Artist Statement

I make performances, compositions, podcasts and installations that tell stories from political struggle, focusing on personal experiences of issues like pollution, police violence, gentrification and capitalist extraction. My work amplifies muted sounds and subdued histories with the goal of reconnecting audiences to ourselves, our environments and each other through listening. To listen is to risk being transformed. I aim to create conditions where listening can disrupt and inform, making space for personal transformation that can break harmful patterns and spark collective joy. To me, this kind of transformation is the basis of positive social change and revolution.

I collaborate with dancers, pastors, storytellers, community organizers, musicians and scientists to generate public creative projects that reach beyond gallery walls. Some of my works deal directly with governmental political power, aiming to disrupt, inform and inspire audiences to act. Other works, like "paradise/maybe windows" and "Voroboros," use impressionistic vignettes to explore how political power shapes my personal experience. My prose work, like The Repair Lab podcast and longform essays, shares a political orientation but uses more traditional forms and conventions. Across my projects, I seek out moments when subjects, including myself, blur with the histories we struggle with, then re-emerge as more of ourselves than we were before.

Bio

Adrian has shown work in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Union Docs, Institut für Alles Mögliche (Berlin), Hundred Years Gallery (London), the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary. Adrian’s work has been featured in online broadcasts and publications including Hyperallergic, WHRO, small audio art, Viral Ecologies and Jupiter Review. Adrian has been recognized and awarded through institutions including UnionDocs, The University of Michigan, Experimental Sound Studio, Robert Wood Johnnson Foundation, Johns Hopkins Peabody School of Music and the University of Chicago.

Adrian plays music and live sound as Sugarlift. Find their music and live sound works here on Soundcloud.

In their role as Multimedia Producer with the University of Virginia's Repair Lab, Adrian wrote and produced the podcast The Repair Lab. Season 1, Wading Between Two Titans, won two 2023 Signal Awards in the categories of Sustainability & Environment and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Season 2, Crosswinds, was shortlisted for a Press Gazette Future of Media award in 2024.

Adrian received a Masters in Fine Art in Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Art & Art History with a minor in Environmental Science & Policy from the College of William & Mary.

Adrian is a member of Studio 23, Association of Independents in Radio, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and Trans Journalists Association.

Work With Me:

I am open to freelance work in sound design, audio editing and recording, as well as graphic design. See my work below:

Sound Design Portfolio

Graphic Design Portfolio

LinkedIn

Additional links:

CV

Movement Reel

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Our House Screaming through the Last Bunker, Precinct, Mansion, Conference Center, Courthouse There Will Be No Emergencies

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Our House Screaming
through the Last Bunker, Precinct, Mansion, Conference Center, Courthouse

There Will Be No Emergencies