Biography

Christopher Willes (b. 1986) is an artist, composer, musician, and facilitator based in so-called Canada. His work takes listening as both subject and method — examining how acts of shared attention raise questions of collectivity, agency, and care. He makes projects in public libraries, schools, concert halls, and community spaces, developed through long-term collaborations with a wide variety of people: trained and untrained performers, children and seniors, musicians and dancers. The resulting works take many forms — concerts, staged performances, intimate one-on-one experiences, exhibitions, publications, workshops, sound walks, and archival interventions — and evolve with each iteration, each new collaborator or participant, and the conditions of each gathering.

With artist Adam Kinner he co-created MANUAL, a one-on-one performance staged covertly in public libraries, which premiered at OFFTA (Montreal) in 2022 and has since toured internationally. Since 2018, Six Turntables has staged a series of noise music concerts with young people, reworking audio recordings from local histories of experimental music. He has created many projects with Public Recordings, including Resonance Gathering, a collectively publication on Pauline Oliveros (Art Metropole, 2023). He has been active in experimental and improvised music since the mid-2000s, and also has over a decade of experience in dance and theatre as a dramaturg, composer, and sound designer.

A significant part of his practice is dedicated to workshops, peer learning events, and community-engaged projects. He has taught performance creation, interdisciplinary practice, and experimental music at the University of Toronto, Concordia University, Musagetes Foundation, Tramway (Glasgow), Studio 303 (Montreal), the Toronto Dance Community Love-In and elsewhere. He was a recurring artist-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library (2017 to 2023) where he created performances and workshops with teens and seniors. With Public Recordings he developed What's Collective?, a workshop series shared internationally from 2019 to 2024, and continues to lead Collaborating Through Scores, an annual workshop at Studio 303.

He holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School at Bard College (USA). He is a two-time Chalmers Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow (USA), and an affiliated researcher at the Milieux Institute (Montreal). He worked as an associate artist and producer with Public Recordings (2016–2024), and a composer and dramaturge with the contemporary dance company Dancemakers (2011–2015). He is currently studying Conflict Mediation at the University of Waterloo.

Christopher’s work has been presented across Canada, the USA, UK, Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia. Recent presentations include works at the Toronto Biennial of Art, The Music Gallery (Toronto), Musée d'art de Joliette (Quebec), PuSH Festival (Vancouver), Kyoto Experiment (Japan), Take Me Somewhere (Scotland), Fierce Festival (England), YCAM (Japan), Moving In November (Finland) and Bétonsalon (France).

Contact:
info@christopherwilles.com
Instagram: @christopherwilles