Bio

Dr. Liz Gre (pronounced Grey), they/she,  is a Black Midwestern American composer, multi-disciplinary artist, researcher, and vocalist known for her genre-less compositions created through collaboration. Their artistic practice is deeply rooted in storytelling and the visceral realms of the imaginary, exploring the opacity of human experience. 

 As a sound artist-researcher, Gre delves into the applied use of Endarkened Co-Composition—a collaborative method she developed for generative sound and music-making. This approach centres Black and Indigenous forms of storytelling and story-keeping, utilizing methods such as storytelling, interviews, and informal exchanges. Endarkened Co-Composition is a non-linear process focused on creating a space of endarkened co-presence where shared stories and experiences fundamentally shape the sonic outputs. 

Currently, Gre is a cross-departmental Lecturer at the University of Southampton in Music and Art and Media Technology. She also serves as the EDI Lead for Music. Her work has been exhibited at notable venues such as Lindisfarne Castle (Holy Island, UK), Lisson Gallery (London, UK), The Union for Contemporary Art (Omaha, USA), and Queens Museum (New York, USA). 

Gre’s performances and premieres include prestigious events such as The Cartography Project at the Kennedy Center/Washington National Opera (Washington DC, USA), North Star: Conversations on Boundlessness Symposium at Lincoln Center (New York, USA), and Arachne: Rebirthing Dislocated Cultures, a collaborative piece with artist Adelaide Damoah at Gagosian Gallery (Britannia Street, London, UK). Additionally, she co-created Under the Skin of a Guild: Wake of Lost Souls, a collaborative performance and film with artist Enam Gbewonyo, co-commissioned by Arts&Heritage and Guildhall Art Gallery (London, UK). Another significant work includes We Invoke the Black. To Rest, a collaborative performance with Enam Gbewonyo, activating Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition Fly in League with the Night at Tate Britain (London, UK). 

Composer’s Statement

I make works that emerge from sites of opacity - what I call sites of endarkened co-presence. These are places where people, their ideas, memories, and imaginations inhabit an opacity that does not devalue ancestral ways of knowing and being, but rather protects and sanctifies them. As a place for qualitative research, the intimacy of a storytelling epistemology surrounds the site. As a result of validating Black and Indigenous historical, intuitive, and spiritual ways of making meaning, perhaps connection forms in situ. Further troubling the preconceived or assumed positions of hierarchy by de-centring hegemonic narratives, the site of endarkened co-presence offers fertile roots from which endarkened co-composition can sprout. 

Endarkened Co-Composition is a methodology first conceptualized through my doctoral studies which is currently defined as ‘a collaborative method of archival and generative sound- and music-making that centers Black and Indigenous forms of storytelling and story-keeping through interview, formal and informal exchange.’ Endarkened co-composition is a non-linear process that is rooted in creating a site of endarkened co-presence where the stories and experiences shared fundamentally shape and inform the sonic outputs. Within an Endarkened Co-composition framework, I explore negotiations of power and hierarchy in composition, opacity as aesthetic, narrative-based sound work and various hauntologies in Black and Queer life.

I am drawn to a variety of materials - both sonic and otherwise - to explore these considerations. While rooted as sound-based work and compositions, my pieces are presented in many forms and thus engage with many materials - I am in constant conversation with the sonic and what it wants from me as an artist. Graphic scores and photoscores invite me to engage with marker, pen, paper and 35mm film to facilitate improvisation with musicians and players who wish to interpret these scores. Sound installations invite me to consider multi-sensory tactility, where I incorporate natural materials like limestone and soil and fabricated material like fiber optics and textiles to create a world specific to the compositions (Embodied Cacophonies, 2024-2026 Lindisfarne Castle). Compositions for performance, film, chamber and beyond invite me to remain focused on breath, story and narrative in order to make works that draw life from and retreat to the archive.

Info

Hometown: Omaha, NE, USA
Current base: Southampton, UK

lizgremusic@gmail.com

For research inquiries:
e.lassiter@soton.ac.uk