We Found Our Own Reality

30th Jan 2023 30th Jan 2023 14:00 22:00

Exhibition, Installation, and Films

00:00

silent green8 / 5 €

Ticket coming soon

  • Peter Kirn

    US/DE

    Peter Kirn is an electronic musician and media artist. His music spans experimental and club sounds, with releases on Detroit Underground, Wunderblock Records, Kotä Records, and his own Establishment, among others, from scored concert music to work with modern dance and techno.

  • Nabihah Iqbal

    UK

    The musician, producer, DJ and broadcaster from London made waves in 2017 with her debut album, Weighing of the Heart, on Ninja Tune, and is currently an artist-in-residence at London’s Somerset House, where she is writing and recording her second album.

     

    • An exploration of India's first electronic music studio and its resonances into the present moment. Developed and curated by Paul Purgas.

    Photo courtesy of the artist

    »We Found Our Own Reality« examines the cultural, political, and post-colonial echoes of South Asia’s avant-garde sonic pioneers, proposing an alternative reading of Modernist history that weaves together threads of the past with speculations of the future. At the core of the project is a large-scale exhibition at silent green Betonhalle, bringing together architecture, furniture, textiles, and sound to explore India's first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad – as well as a new soundwork, developed by Paul Purgas from a collection of unheard recordings by five previously unknown Indian electronic composers.

    Founded after India’s independence, the NID was a multi-disciplinary facility to train a new generation of free thinking modern designers, animators, ceramicists, film-makers, and sound artists. The exhibition explores the technological and experimental ambition of the NID’s electronic music studio across its four year lifespan at a moment of unprecedented national transformation and cultural exchange between Western and Indian Modernist ideologies, narrating its dialogue with the international sonic and visual avant-gardes of Europe and the USA.

    Several supporting events will take place around the exhibition, including the »Zigzag Afterlives« film programme curated by Nancy Adajania, which engages with a set of epiphanic film experiments made by Indian artists, filmmakers, and composers during the 1960s and 1970s. A one-day discourse programme will reflect upon exchanges and resonances between the Indian and global experimental music and design communities both historically and into the present.

    Event Access

    Please consult our Accessibility section for information on volume / lighting, mobility, age restrictions and other access information.

    Curated by Paul Purgas. Supported by Goethe-Institut, and British Council. The »We Found Our Own Reality« installation was originally commissioned & produced by Camden Arts Centre, London & Tramway, Glasgow.