isolated future #4

 

Due to the current Corona crises, the upcoming Listening Sessions within SAVVY Contemporary’s UNTRAINING THE EAR project will be translated for radio and online channels. Three sound events will be broadcast on our 88,4 FM time in Berlin and 99.7 in Potsdam, as well as streamed online. 

These sessions over the radio are entitled LISTENING STATIONS: Listening Into Placelessness. The idea of placelessness comes from Lucy Lippard, and fuels our interest to imagine a two way communication over radio waves encouraging people to use their imagination when they listen, to actively get inspired by some form of instructions the artists give.  Listening Stations refers to a mode, a type of listening with our body as a station, irrespective of adjutant tools, a body which receives and processes sound. Rather placed than searching, rather stationed, we presume to have more attention to the unknown elements that every place has. We ask ourselves how we can grasp these elements, and is what we are now able to listen to rather anew than new to our ears.

Bani Haykal (in Singapore) will respond with a speculative fiction piece through sound travelling with imaginary communities. As part of an ongoing series of field reports on various communities around Singapore, isolated future #4 looks into a community of machinic dukuns (a Malay term for shamans) residing in the abandoned estate of Tengah. Machinic dukuns, often misidentified as hackers, have offered services to augment machine behaviour, intelligence and processes at the interest of protecting various communities at risk. this field report, published with permission, looks into the various strategies, spells and communities they've worked with as a means of surviving the troubles.

As an artist, composer and musician, bani considers music (making / processes) as material and his projects investigate modes of interfacing and interaction with feedback / feedforward mechanisms. Manifestations of his research culminate into works of various forms encompassing installation, poetry and performance. In his capacity as a collaborator and a soloist, bani has participated in festivals including MeCA Festival (Japan), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Media/Art Kitchen (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan), Liquid Architecture and Singapore International Festival of Arts (Singapore) among others.