TIMEZONES – Imagining Worlds and Making Meaning with four Artists from Delhi by Suvani Suri and Abhishek Mathur

Imagining Worlds and Making Meaning With Four Artists From Delhi

Podcast

Episode 3 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. In this episode, four contemporary artists with a connection to the city of Delhi reflect upon their diverse and evolving practices.

Heeding to the COVID-19 pandemic, they share observations and open spaces of thought where new meanings and speculative realities are constantly being formed, un-formed and re-formed. The composition interweaves these conversations into fragments of found sound, musical renditions, and sonic textures, contemplating the ever-shifting edges of truth, experience, the real, and the fictional.

A podcast by Suvani Suri and Abhishek Mathur

Co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut

Featuring: Mochu, Pallavi Paul, Gagan Singh, Suhail Yusuf Khan

Conceptualisation, Interviews: Abhishek Mathur, Suvani Suri
Arrangement, Editing, Sound Design: Abhishek Mathur, Suvani Suri
Additional Mixing: Gaurav Chintamani, Quarter Note Studios
Additional Samples, Recordings: Suhail, Mochu, Pallavi
Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson
Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs
Artwork: Šejma Fere

→ Full transcript of episode 3

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Mochu works with video and text arranged as installations, lectures and publications. Techno-scientific fictions feature prominently in his practice, often overlapping with instances or figures drawn from art history and philosophy. Recent projects have explored mad geologies, psychedelic subcultures and Indian Modernist painting. Exhibitions include 9^th Asia-Pacific Triennial, Sharjah Biennial 13, 4^th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Transmediale BWPWAP.

Suhail Yusuf Khan is a sarangi player, vocalist, composer, and a PhD candidate in the department of music at Wesleyan University. He brings together expertise from a performance career that has already extended over twenty-years, creative ability, and academic research to find new modes of expression in Hindustani music, contemporary rock fusion, pop, folk, jazz, and experimental music. His ethnographic scholarship draws on personal experience as an eighth-generation musician belonging to a lineage of Hindustani musicians. He has been featured on more than fifteen albums and is currently signed to Domino records, U.K.

Pallavi Paul works with video, performance, and installation. Her practice speaks to poetic exploration of cultural histories, questioning the limits of speculation and facticity and evidence. Paul is also engaged in thinking about ideas of the archive, tensions between document and documentary and the implication of trace within these openings. She has received her PhD in Film Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Paul’s work has been exhibited in venues including Tate Modern, London (2013); AV Festival, New Castle (2018, 2016), Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon (2018), Savvy Contemporary (2019), Contour Biennale, Mechelen (2017), New Alphabet School, HKW (2020). She currently lives and works in New Delhi.

Gagan Singh is a Delhi-based visual artist, whose experiments with drawing have involved engaging with illustration, cartoons, storytelling, memory mapping, site specific installations, wall art and artist books. Gagan brings an element of flaneury to his work, both in the literal sense of walking through the city, but also via the mental act of constructing visual narratives in landscapes drawn from memory and observation.

Additional Playlists

Explore a playlist that takes off from the artist conversations in TIMEZONES Delhi podcast by Norient and the Goethe-Institut.

Curated by Suvani Suri and Abhishek Mathur

A compilation of sounds, music and provocations by the four artists featured in the podcast but also extended to many contemporary and critical voices from the milieu. The collection includes film, research material and references sourced from the artists, dialogues/conversations/features that they have been a part of along with a range of music – experimental/electro-acoustic compositions, Hindustani classical/folk-fusion-jazz, Sufi music, rap, songs of resistance, and more.

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? The artists’ thoughts on their moods, their social, political, and intellectual realities and their philosophies (of life) have been worked up into experimental audio collages.

The podcasts run the gamut of formats and content, from straight journalism to experimental and documentary approaches, ethnography and fiction, sound art, and improvisation. The TIMEZONES series endeavours to create new artistic forms of storytelling, listening and exchange across the boundaries of geography, time zones, genres, and practices.

The TIMEZONES podcast series is co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut.

Biography

Abhishek Mathur is a musician and sound designer based in New Delhi, India. He is a guitar player and founding member of Advaita, one of India’s most acclaimed bands. Abhishek has been composing, arranging, and producing music for media such as films, TV, theater, art installations, and podcasts for the past two decades. He is also the facilitator and course designer of a short term program in music production at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communications, New Delhi. Follow him on Instagram and Facebook.

Biography

Suvani Suri is an artist and researcher based in New Delhi. She works with sound, text, and intermedia assemblages and has been exploring various modes of transmission such as podcasts, auditory texts, sonic environments, objects, installations, fictions, experimental workshops, and live interventions. Her research interests lie in the relational and speculative capacities of listening, voice, aural/oral histories, and the spectral dispositions of sound that can activate critical imaginations. Actively engaged in thinking through the techno-politics that listening is embedded in, her practice is informed by the processes of production, mediation, perception, and distribution of sound. Alongside, she composes sound for video and performance works and teaches at several universities and educational spaces where her pedagogical interests conflate with a sustained inquiry into the digital and sonic sensorium. Follow her on her website, Instagram, or SoundCloud.

Links

Audio Pervert: «The Indian Side of Sampling» (Norient)

Rana Ghose: «India’s Experimental Underground Vol. 1» (Norient)

Thomas Burkhalter, Suvani Suri, and Abhishek Mathur: «Aesthetics Matter: New Ways of Storytelling» (An audio talk on TIMEZONES)

Shop

TIMEZONES – Season 1

€15.00

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what living and working in culture and the arts involvse in different contexts today? Season 1 with a focus on Nairobi, Belgrade/Sabac/Zurich, Delhi, the Bay Area, and Rio de Janeiro.

purchase

TIMEZONES – Season 2

€15.00

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? Season 2 focuses on Beirut, Montréal, Dhaka, Mt Makiling, and Gaza.

purchase

TIMEZONES – Season 3

€15.00

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different contexts today? Season 3 travels from Budapest to Colombo, Buenos Aires, and Ukraine.

purchase

Published on December 03, 2020

Last updated on April 09, 2024

Topics

Belonging

City

Listening

Tradition

All Topics

Special

TIMEZONES

Snap

print as pdf

I Often Work at Night

Podcast

by Thomas Burkhalter,

Daniel Jakob

Angolan producer Nazar grew up in Belgium, spent his teens in Angola, and is now based in the UK. In this interview, he tells us how he translates episodes from his biography into his music. He talks about war, anger, discrimination, and loneliness, his father’s political activism and war diary, and mental health issues within the music community. An experimental podcast full of samples from his 2020 album Guerrilla and snippets from the interview, conducted in London.

A Podcast by Thomas Burkhalter and Daniel Jakob

Quotes from the Podcast

#anger

«With the medium of music I let it all out. As violent as I can: feeling attacked, feeling not welcome, feeling that I don’t have a place where I actually feel at home. That kind of things translate into my music. Anger, but controlled, and rational. I always stay rational. I never truly incite to violence.»

#dad

«The album ['Guerrilla']is very biographical, but it has two main central points: me and my dad. Because he’s a very prominent figure in my life obviously. Because of his presence and also because of his absence, basically half of my life I lived without seeing him.»

Guerrilla by Nazar

#biographical

«I got the chance to have an extraordinary story I guess in terms of my family and where they came from and where they are right now. I took those histories and I put them in episodes.»

#identity

«I feel African before everything else. When I went to Angola for the first time I truly felt home. I truly felt like you are not just a black kid there.»

#war

«There is a track called 'Bunker' (…). It talks about what happened in 1992 when the war restarted in Angola after the elections. The regime saw the elections as an opportunity to attack the opposition, because all the main leaders of the opposition were in town. My family also was in town, so it was very intense, like a hunt basically. Part of my family survived because they were hiding in hotels where the foreign journalists stayed.»

#peace

«The first fifteen years after peace are the most crucial ones to decide if we are going back to war or not.»

#internet

«It’s bad when the only thing you can rely on is what you get from the internet. It gives you a fake perception of the world, I guess.»

#producing

«I work on a track, work on a track, and then it’s always around seven to eight hours that I get up, 'whoa', and I do a this signature move which is me screaming, 'yeah'.»

#loneliness

«It’s extremely lonely but I’ve always been like a solitary type of guy, so I’ve never actually minded too much this.»

Further Releases by Nazar

Territorial EP by Nazar

+244 EP by Nazar

Enclave by Nazar

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music project «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «South Asian Sound Stories» with musicians from the UK, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Follow him on Spotify, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Instagram, X, or Facebook.

Biography

Dejot aka Daniel Jakob (aka Dubokaj) is a Swiss electronica producer, film composer based in the city of Bern. Follow him on Spotify, Facebook, or Instagram.

Links

Thomas Burkhalter, Simon Grab: «War, Propaganda, and Bombs» (Norient)

Thomas Burkhalter: «Meira Asher: The Politics of Sound Art» (Norient)

Serge Yared: «Silence Is the Real Taboo» (Norient)

Thomas Burkhalter: «Danke, dass ich den Krieg nochmal hören darf» (Norient)

Published on January 04, 2021

Last updated on April 14, 2021

Topics

Loneliness

Diaspora

Migration

War

All Topics

print as pdf

TIMEZONES - The Life in Music of Three Experimental Musicians (in Serbia and Switzerland) by Svetlana Maraš

The Life in Music of Three Experimental Musicians (in Serbia and Switzerland)

Podcast

by Svetlana Maraš

Episode 2 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. An electro-acoustic composition based on the interviews with the three artists Mara Miccichè, Branko Džinović, and Vukašin Đelić, the close friends and collaborators of the podcast producer, who have never met each other.

They live in three different cities – Šabac, Belgrade, Zurich. Their stories as well as their sounds, intertwine throughout the piece modified and accompanied by the sounds of the podcast producer, all of them creating an ensemble of voices, sounds, and musical fragments deriving from diverse set of musical practices by each of them.

A podcast by Belgrade-based composer and sound artist Svetlana Maraš

Co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut

Featuring: Mara Miccichè, Branko Džinović, and Vukašin Đelić

Composition, Montage: Svetlana Maraš
Sounds and Words by: Mara Miccichè, Branko Džinović, and Vukašin Đelić
Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson
Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs
Artwork: Šejma Fere

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Branko Džinović is an accordion and bandoneon player born in Šabac, Serbia. He is performer, improviser, and composer. Concert reviewers have called him «a dangerously active volcano» (Austrian Kronen Zeutung) and described his playing as «ingenious» (Neues Volksblatt). He was «Grand Prize» winner at the 2001 Accordion World Cup in London, U.K.; he won the 2004 «Das Podium» in Linz and the 2013 «DMA Recital Competition» at the University of Toronto – both of which are open to all instrumentalists. Džinović holds a Master’s degree from the Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama, and Dance in Linz (MA, 2008) and a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA, 2017) in performance from the University of Toronto. He currently lives in Šabac.

Vukašin Đelić (Woo) is a guitarist from Belgrade. Member of Dol band and man behind Belgrade Noise Recordings. He has made many significant performances solo and with other people, both in Serbia and internationally. His latest album U zavisnosti od dana, was released in May 2020 and was recorded in his house in Grocka, on the city outskirts. Vukašin lives in Belgrade.

Mara Miccichè is a vocalist and composer from Zurich. She holds Master Of Arts in Music POP from ZhdK (Zurich). She performed internationally at places such as Les Digitales Festival, Zürich (CH), EXPO Milan – Swiss Pavillon, H3K, Basel, Teatro di Locarno and many other places. She is preparing a new release for the OUS, Swiss-based label.

Additional Playlists

The TIMEZONES podcast series is co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut.

Biography

Svetlana Maraš (1985) is composer and sound artist from Serbia. She works at the intersection of experimental music, sound art and new media. Maraš has presented her work internationally, at venues, festivals and events such as CTM (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), House of Electronic Arts (Basel), Espace Multimedia Gantner (Bourogne), Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), Ausland (Berlin), Izlog Suvremenog Zvuka (Zagreb), ICMC (New York), International Rostrum of Composers (Wroclaw), ISEA (Dubai) and many other places. She is the head of Radio Belgrade’s Electronic Studio. Follow her on SoundCloud and on her Website.