A Slightly Curving Place
Thu, July 23, 2020 - Sun, September 20, 2020 https://www.hkw.de/de/programm/projekte/2020/a_slightly_curving_place/start.php
The term “Isipabbarabhumi” from Prakrit describes in the cosmology of Jainism a special place high above the sky that is curved like a parasol. There the bodiless souls of the perfect live in eternal solitude. Separated from the rest of the cosmos, they cannot make contact with one another, the other souls neither hear nor are heard.
In the exhibition, an arched place is not created at the apex of the universe, but under an ambisonic sound dome. An audience can gather here to trace a past that is no longer audible today. In another room, a dancing body rotates on projection screens and paints a picture of time that merges into another.
The exhibition responds to the experimental approaches of the sound archaeologist Umashankar Manthravadi. Its center is a polyphonic, spatially staged audio piece and a video installation that bring together contributions from literature, choreography, composition, dance, drama, music, field recordings and sound design. The participants not only take up the work of others, but also incorporate other suggestions and transform them.
The ambisonic dome consists of 21 loudspeakers and creates a three-dimensional sound field. It is provided by the audio communication department at the Technical University of Berlin.
An accompanying volume for the exhibition will be published in September 2020 at archive books.
The exhibition is being created with the participation of and in collaboration with Umashankar Manthravadi, Bani Abidi, Mojisola Adebayo, Vinit Agarwal, Sukhesh Arora, Anurima Banerji, Lilia Di Bella, Moushumi Bhowmik, Arunima Chatterjee, Madhuri Chattopadyay, Padmini Chettur, Emesema Csornai, Hugo Esquinca, Jenifer Evans, Eunice Fong, Tyler Friedman, Janardan Ghosh, Brooke Holmes, Alexander Keefe, Sukanta Majumdar, Robert Millis, Farah Mulla, Rita Sonal Panjatan, Ayaz Pasha, TJ Rehmi, RENU, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Sara, Yashas Shetty, The Traveling Archive, Maarten Visser, and others.