Soundcards from a City at the Edges of the Sea, 2020, sixteen soundcards documenting the sonic environment of Kochi, India.
Soundcards from a City at the Edges of the Sea emerged from the research Edgar Kandratian and Vincent Chomaz conducted in Kochi, India. Titled When the Sea Rises, this project was conceived as a speculative research of what the future could bring. It brought together interviews, writing, and modes of situated being – walking, listening – to investigate what would become of Kochi and the coastline of the Lakshadweep Sea once the sea rises.
Built from excerpts of soundscapes and interviews, these sixteen soundcards form a coherent narrative that attempts to delineate the future contours of a city that always lived under the threat of being flooded or submerged by a tsunami. They act as an associative and sonic exploration of what could be lost to climate change – to sea rise, increased level of precipitations, and flooding.
“It starts with a rain. This city is surrounded by water. From the flooding of Muziris, Kochi was created. The rain seems intent on drowning this landscape. It feeds into the lagoons of the backwaters. Feeds into waters that feed us. Voices are heard. Singing. Chanting. Playing. Croaking.The ocean roars around us. Playful and dangerous. We travel over it. Float above it. And wonder. What will happen to this city? After it’s submerged.”
Soundcards from a City at the Edges of the Sea were presented online, on the social media handle of the Goethe-Institut Bangalore and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
A Fragile Chorus of Voices, 2019, one-channel sound installation.
A Fragile Chorus of Voices comprises a series of intimate and anonym audio recordings of people singing a cappella. The singings were recorded in Amman and were sourced from individuals belonging to the various communities composing the city.
Brought together, the singings speak about the diversity of the human fabric of Amman but also echo the complexities of the Middle East and the Levant. In their beauty, their fragility, their hopefulness, or their intrinsic melancholy transpires a reflection of the region’s past and present.
The recordings were presented as raw elements of a sound intervention set in the public stairs located between the two sides of the Darat al Funun.
A Fragile Chorus of Voices was made possible with the support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and of Darat al Funun.
Beyond Monumentality took as its point of departure the ways in which monuments serve to construct common national histories and narratives, and moved beyond that to consider and excavate the narratives that are unwanted, erased, or overlooked.
Framed over seven sessions and ten locations, Beyond Monumentality referred to listening as a mode of associative investigation bridging conscious and unconscious knowledge. It focused on field listening and associative listening to unravel the relation between the soundscapes of the city and official and non-official social and political narratives that constructs the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Beyond Monumentality took place in the frame of the exhibition Away from a State of Things, and was made possible with the kind the support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and of Darat al Funun.
Zona Session #2, 2019, collaborative exchange program.
The Zona Sessions were a recurring, artistic exchange between Amman and Berlin. Thought as an experimental, collaborative laboratory, the Zona Sessions promoted the creation of a temporary artist collective as a structure for cross-disciplinary exchange and collaborative research.
If the first iteration reflected on how the private sphere and the public space intersected in the Hashemite capital, the second Zona Session set in the northern neighborhood of Berlin-Wedding focused on ideas of fragility, vulnerability, and care.
The second Zona Session was held at the ZK/U - Center for Art and Urbanistics as part of its Ständige Vertretung residency program for Berlin-based artists and initiatives.
The collective was composed of eight artists and cultural practitioners residing in Amman and Berlin: Joud Halawani Al-Tamimi, Vincent Chomaz, Eliza Goldox, Reem Marji, Ameer Masoud, Ki Hyun Park, Yazan Setabouha, and Fadi Zumot.
The Zona Sessions were a common endeavor of the Spring Sessions, ZONA D and Vincent Chomaz.
Image: stillframe from 213 x 183 by
Joud Halawani Al-Tamimi, Reem Marji and
Ki Hyun Park.
Echoes of the Past - A collective study of six 4.3 locations, 2019, workshop.
Echoes of the Past was the result of a month-long research residency at Culture Space Yang, on Jeju Island, Korea.
Framed as a two-day workshop, Echoes of the Past referred to listening as a mode of associative investigation bridging conscious and unconscious knowledge. It focused on a series of six collective listening sessions, conducted in and around Jeju City.
These listening sessions brought together a group of local residents and were the occasion for the group to re-assess and re-think, through associative listening and group discussions, their knowledge and understanding of the events of the 4.3 Jeju Uprising and Massacre that took place on Jeju Island between March 1947 and September 1954.
Labeled as communist insurgency by the American Military Government in Korea and the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, what was merely a movement denouncing the potential division of Korea became a tragedy where approximately 30,000 people were brutally murdered by governmental forces, while another 40,000 people fled to Japan to avoid the horrors of the repression campaign.
Did You Really Want to Live Forever?, 2018, durational performance.
Moving amongst the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek collection Ancient Rome statues, six artists interviewed the statues as if they were living beings, asking them about their past and present experiences, before and after they became statues.
The performance took place as part of Now we are history curated by Travers.
Zona Session #1, 2018, collaborative exchange program.
The Zona Sessions were a recurring, artistic exchange between Amman and Berlin that intended to reflect on the intersection between private spheres and public spaces of both cities. Its first iteration looked at the visibility and fragility of intimate gestures, masculinities, femininities, sensibilities, and othernesses.
How is public space dealt with and reflected in suppressed movements and emotions? What is the connection between emotion, identity, and performance in public space? Thought as an experimental, collaborative laboratory, the Zona Sessions promoted the creation of a temporary artist collective as a structure for cross-disciplinary exchange and collaborative research.
The collective was composed of eight artists and cultural practitioners residing in Amman and Berlin: Joud Halawani Al-Tamimi, Vincent Chomaz, Eliza Goldox, Bayan Kiwan, Reem Marji, Ameer Masoud, Ki Hyun Park, and Fadi Zumot.
The Zona Sessions were a common endeavor of the Spring Sessions, ZONA D and Vincent Chomaz. The first Zona Session was made possible with the support of the Roberto Cimetta Fund and the MMAG Foundation.
Image: stillframe from 5 Fingers by Eliza Goldox with Bayan Kiwan, Reem Marji, Joud Halawani Al-Tamimi, Fadi Zumot, and Ki Hyun Park.
Geographies of the places of imagination, 2018, three-channel installation.
A sound piece focusing on private space but also the space within ourselves, presented as a haunting installation in the empty rooms of Grace, an abandoned hotel building in Stathmos Larissis, Athens.
The work is composed of a constellation of texts ranging from recollections, musings on what it means to be living somewhere, and pure fiction.
Voice: Vincent Chomaz Photographic documentation by Konstantinos Doumpenidis & Jorgina Stamogianni.
The work was presented as part of Politics of Space, the first chapter of the collaborative platform In Art We Trust.
Pala Lab_Collective Affairs, 2018, laboratory for collaborative practices.
What is the relevance of the collective in the age of competitive individualism? What does it mean for artists and cultural operators to be working together? It is a source of empowerment, a reaction, a conscious act of revolt or an accident? Can we work together and resist a system based on exploitation and domination?
Pala Lab_Collective Affairs was a week-long artist laboratory dedicated to collaborative and participative artistic practices. The program proposed the creation of a temporary community of artist groups and collectives – a metacollective – to establish an environment for exchange and discursive research. It brought together artists and collectives based in and around Berlin, Cairo, Jakarta, and Johannesburg to work on notions of change and sharing, but also reflect on the collaboration and its politics.
Participating artists: Cairo Bats, Jeanno Gaussi, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi & Pamela Sunstrum Phatsimo, Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett, and Utopian Union Collective Affairs was initiated by Zona Dynamic, a fluid project initiative which was composed of Eliza Goldox and Vincent Chomaz for this project.
Collective Affairs was made possible with the contributions of the Asia-Europe Foundation, the Goethe-Institut South Africa, the Goethe-Institut Indonesia, and the York University.
De quoi rêve Dakar (Eng: What does Dakar dream about) was a four-week participatory research project, during which residents of Dakar were invited to share their dreams as texts or oral retellings. The project was developed as part of a long-term research project, called Dreams, and took place between June and July 2018 at RAW Material Company, centre for art, knowledge and society.
Initiated in 2015, Dreams focuses on the collection of dreams as a mean to explore how various territories – and their political, social, and cultural conditions – can affect the psyche of their inhabitants. Each iteration of Dreams participates to a working archive of dreams documenting worldwide variations in the way reality is represented and dreamed.
