Tvål
Tvål is a long distance multimedia collaborative project between Hanna Elliott and Roxy Farman that began in 2020. Roxy Farman is a Brooklyn based artist who makes experimental music under the moniker Al-Uzzza. She performed in the experimental electronic duo Wetware 2015-2020 and performed as a vocalist for the thrash metal band Manat. Roxy is a musician, visual artist, creative writer, vocalist & performer.
Hanna began working with Roxy due to their mutual embodied approach to sound, and their liberated open format to collaboration. Roxy and Hanna’s main work they have exhibited have been live performances that consist of structured playful improvisations interacting with sonic electronic components. Hanna and Roxy’s work apply a stream of consciousness format, with elements of endurance. Beyond live performance, their work extends to a consistent practice of drawing, collage, and recording.
Tvål performed at Pioneer Works in 2022 for the exhibition ‘Breyer P’orridge: We Are But One’ in 2022. They played a Chicago music festival in 2023 featuring Various Noise, techno, and Industrial projects from Nasheville, Texas, Oregon, San Diego, and New York. They were featured on the Compilation ‘Intravis’ by Vial Recordings in 2024.
Make the Brutal Tender
(Sound Design/ Performer)
Eryka Dellenbach works as a journalistic filmmaker, mover, and choreographer based in Tuscon, AZ. Eryka worked with HOGG on the piece ‘Peregrine Midwest’ in 2017 in Chicago. After moving to Brooklyn in 2018, she began collaborating with local dancer Nola Sporn and long distance with Hanna of HOGG on the project Make the Brutal Tender.
Eryka choreographed, conceptualized and performed in the piece with Nola Sporn, while Hanna created the soundtrack based on Eryka’s concepts and movement.
Eryka, Nola, & Hanna performed ‘Make the Brutal Tender’ in 2019 at Links Hall, Chicago for the Festival ‘Power Ouch.’ Movement Research featured the piece in October 2019 at Judson Church, NYC. In 2020 they performed the piece at Caravaggio Studios, NYC as a part of the art show Eryka curated called ‘Aftermath & Intimacy,’ in February 2020.
“MTBT takes inspiration from the visceral, ambivalent forms of sculptor Berlinde de Bruyckere, flamenco dance, industrial music and the writings of Maggie Nelson, from which the project takes its title. Born out of a desire to challenge oversaturated ideas of ‘catharsis’ and violence, MTBT was created to hold space for the practice of cultivating a relationship with different physical and psychological thresholds related to tenderness, aggression and the feminine ‘brute’.”
Abstructum
Abstructum, a collaboration Between Andy Ortmann and Hanna Elliott spanned from 2016-2021. Andy Ortmann, sound, visual, and conceptual artist, has been making experimental electronic music since 1990. He runs Nihilist Records and has been the mastermind of the performance/ electronic group, ‘Panicsville,’ and a longtime dj at the legendary free form New Jersey based radio station WFMU.
Abstructum released one full length tape in 2017, and was featured on the Compilation cassette ‘Accidental Business’ in 2022 by the Belgian based label, Unknown Precept. Abstructum primarily functioned as a recording project, only performing three local shows in Chicago during the projects’s lifespan. Ortmann & Hanna played with recording techniques, sampling, acoustic instrumentation mixed with eurorack modules, synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, software, and anything they could find to replicate preconceived sounds and concepts that they had come up with.
The music combines Ortmann’s playful sensibilities with abstract sound collage with Hanna’s emphasis in disjointed instrumentation, bodily vocalizations, and slow-paced meditative rhythmic compositions.
HOGG
In 2011 Atlanta based artist & musician Emma Sims and Hanna Elliott moved to Chicago and began an open ended collaborative project that eventually became the experimental musical duo HOGG in 2015.
Over the 2010s HOGG garnered a reputation for the intensity and inventive quality of their live performances. Emma and Hanna had no designated roles in the project. The two switched seamlessly between songs playing bass, guitar, floor tom, & vocals while playing with objects and various electronics. Their unpredictability gave an impression chaotic and unexpected in form but meticulously rigorous in its execution.
The duo’s music evokes tumultuous emotional states, dealing with themes of absurdity, desire, carnal sexuality, shame, cynicism, hopelessness and romanticism. Their music has been categorized as Post-Industrial due to the downtempo rhythms mixed with their violent, sexual, and occult adjacent content. The deconstructed approach to their voices and instrumentation evokes the style of No Wave and the existential moodiness to late 70s post-punk.
Between 2015 and 2022 HOGG released 3 cassettes and 3 Vinyl Records with Chicago labels Scrapes, Nihilist, & Rotted Tooth Recordings. They performed in France, Montreal, and went on four American tours. Hogg collaborated on the piece ‘Versus’ with dance group Antibody Corporation, with improvisor and composers Michel Zerang & Jim Baker for Resonance Series Residency, and with Eryka Dellenbach for the short Film and Performance piece ‘Peregrine Midwest.’ They also worked with the visual artists Elijah Burgher and Rebbeca Walz & Ryan Pfieffer for their two releases with the label Scrapes.