BIOGRAPHY
Jeff Kolar (b. Chicago, Illinois, US) is a composer, sound artist, radio producer, and curator working in Chicago, United States. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2009. His work, described as “speaker-shredding” (Half Letter Press), “wonderfully strange” (John Corbett), and “characteristically curious” (Marc Weidenbaum), activates sound in unconventional, temporary, and ephemeral ways using appropriation and remix as a critical practice. His solo and collaborative projects, installations, and public performances often investigate the mundane sonic nuances of everyday electronic devices.
He has performed and exhibited widely across the United States, and at international venues and festivals such as the New Museum (New York, US), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, US), Moogfest (Durham, North Carolina, US), The Kitchen (New York, US), CTM Festival for Adventurous Music (Berlin, Germany), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, Illinois, US), Kino Šiška (Ljubljana, Slovenia), ORF RadioKulturhaus (Vienna, Austria), Radio Revolten International Radio Art Festival (Halle, Germany), Megapolis Audio Festival (New York, USA), LAK Festival of Nordic Sound Art (København, Denmark), among others.
His work has been reviewed and discussed in international print publications and online platforms such as The New York Times, The Wire Magazine, Red Bull Music Academy and Architect Magazine, and in an array of art, design and music publications including VICE, Art Slant, designboom, and Rhizome.org.
His work has been commissioned by the Propeller Fund, a re-granting agency of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Wave Farm, a re-granting agency of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), and others. He has delivered lectures at New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto, Canada), Le Cube Centre de création numérique (Paris, France), Concordia University Topological Media Lab (Montreal, Canada), Parsons Paris School of Art & Design (Paris, France), University of California Santa Cruz, Film & Digital Media Department (Santa Cruz, California, US), Wave Farm Study Center (New York, USA), and led workshops at Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Ecole d’Enseignement Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, France), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA).
His work has been broadcasted internationally on radio stations including ORF Kunstradio (Vienna, Austria), Radia Network, WFMU (New Jersey, USA), Deutschlandradio Kultur (Berlin, Germany), CKUT (Montreal, Canada), Ràdio Web MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), Vancouver Co-operative Radio CFRO 100.5-FM (Vancouver, Canada), Radio Eterogenia (Córdoba, Argentina), Radio Libertaire (Paris, France), Stress FM (Lisbon, Portugal), WGXC (New York, USA), among others.
His work has been released on a variety of record labels including Panospria + No Type (Canada), H.A.K. Lo-Fi Record (France), free103point9 (US), Amigos Publishing (US), and has appeared in compilations by Furthernoise.org, iFAR (England), Phantom Airwaves (US), and Sonic Circuits (US). His video work was published in the DVD journal ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art.
