Ritualism meets Athleticism: An Introduction to PGNA’s Parasound
Art and sound have always existed in dialogue. One echoes in the other, producing textures that extend beyond the ear or eye alone. When sound contracts, it creates tension; a sculptural density in the air. When it harmonises, it dissolves boundaries, carrying bodies, movements, and meanings. This interplay between contraction and harmony becomes not just a metaphor but a methodology: it is how bodies of work are built, how environments are shaped, how shared experiences take form. One such evolving body is All Terrain Training [ATT], a long-term research and performance series by the London-based choreographer Will Pegna (PGNA).
Pegna has built a practice that spans movement, design, and collaboration. Known for merging athletic functionality with themes of spirituality and artificial harmony, his work challenges how groups move, learn, and form together. Since founding ATT in 2020, Pegna has taken his research to international audiences in Berlin, Milan, Seoul, and The Hague, whilst development continues through revolving performances within the UK.
His projects have been platformed by the likes of Nowness, Saatchi Gallery, and Geoscience Communication, and supported by one of London’s leading curatorial collectives; fynn studio. Alongside this, Pegna has forged a wide-reaching collaborative network across sport, fashion, and performance, working with brands including côte&ciel, adidas, J.L-A.L, Vibram, and Johanna Parv, each partnership serving to extend his choreographic inquiry into new cultural terrains.
The latest chapter of this research is Parasound, invited to exhibit at London’s Whitechapel Gallery as part of the prestigious “London Open Live” programme. Here, Pegna and his collaborators push ATT into a new realm of “athletic expansion,”. The one hour performance set within a modular metal frame, introduces 6 hybrid beings tasked with collecting sound using unconventional methods. The piece uses architecture, sonic language and detailed movement to investigate human behaviour, collective potential and digital dissonance.
Integral to this performance is the collaboration with côte&ciel and London-based designer Joel Wilson, who together created three bespoke “Sonic Bags” for the performers. côte&ciel, known for their explorations of form and function through travel-inspired design, proposed a solution that resonated with Pegna’s themes of mobility and transition. Having already collaborated before with Pegna, on a past performance titled COURIER in Cologne, it was a perfect full circle moment for both parties.
Supplying Wilson with an archive of scraps, webbing, hardware, and fragments of their iconic bags, using these materials, Wilson spliced, reworked, and morphed them into three one-of-a-kind objects, fusing fragments of the brand’s past into something entirely new. Each bag unique, adapted for their user, helped to amplify the world building Parasound was developing.
They will never be sold or reproduced, existing solely within the history of Parasound. As such, the “Sonic Bags” become anchors of the performance’s world: not only practical vessels for sound, but symbolic carriers of memory, process, and collective experimentation.
We were lucky enough to speak to Will to get an even further insight into his vision, the ‘sonic bag’ collaboration, and speak about what could be next for him and his ATT platform.
