Biography

Christopher Willes (b. 1986) is an artist, composer/musician, dramaturg and facilitator based in so-called Canada. Working across performance, music/sound, visual arts and publication, his work centres on listening as both subject and method — exploring how acts of shared attention can open up new forms of collectivity, agency, and care. The projects are developed through long-term, process-oriented collaborations with a wide variety of people: trained and untrained performers, teenagers and seniors, musicians and dancers. The resulting works take many forms — concerts, ensemble performances, intimate one-on-one experiences, exhibitions, publications, community-arts 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 Christopher’s practice is dedicated to organizing educational workshops, peer learning events and other community engaged projects. He has taught performance creation, interdisciplinary practice, and experimental music at institutions including Studio 303 (Montreal), the Toronto Dance Community Love-In, the University of Toronto, Concordia (Montreal) and Tramway (Glasgow). From 2017 to 2023, he was a recurring artist-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library, creating performances and workshops with teens and seniors. With Public Recordings he developed What’s Collective?, a workshop series shared internationally from 2019 to 2024. He also leads Collaborating Through Scores, an ongoing workshop at Studio 303 exploring the role of scores in group processes.

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

His work has been presented across Canada, the USA, UK, Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia, including recent presentations 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