budhaditya

[budhaditya]

https://soundcloud.com/budhaditya/exile-and-other-syndromes_excerpts

[budhaditya]

Intraview

Excerpts from “Intraview,” in Chattopadhyay, Budhaditya (forthcoming), “The New Media Monk: An Ode to Soliloquy” 

Artist Budhaditya Chattopadhyay met researcher Budhaditya Chattopadhyay in a dimply lit Copenhagen café. The afternoon glow of a dying winter sun was already dazed and diffused when they started talking; during their conversation, the city was getting a fresh coat of snow, and the streetlights were melting in the warmth of intimacy.

BC: Do you like this winter season? BC: I like the smell of air. I was born in a winter afternoon; so all afternoons like this are a call to start from nothingness.

BC: What about the city where you are currently? Do you have a strong impression? BC: Of all the cities and numerous places I have encountered so far, the current is the easiest to navigate; nobody talks to me, so do I – being outside of a society keeps me constantly off the margin. I enjoy the lack of public attention except of the few intolerant eyes on the street and the occasionally awkward glances that demand explanation how on earth a non-European entity survives here well-dressed like everyone, and contributes to knowledge production. My sheer corporal presence is an act of resistance in such contexts. 

BC: You were neither trained as an artist nor as a composer, how do you consider yourself one? BC: I am not - I am being just myself. And as intensely I experience my being, this is getting clearer to me that whatever you call yourself, artistic practice is a condition that you surrender to, you cannot help.

BC: Why do you go through the process of creation? Why do you do art? BC: For me it’s nothing but an attempt to transcend pain and sorrow; to rise above angst that is generated from a neurosis – born out of constant migration, of perpetual forgetting, and an invariable feeling of incompleteness.

BC: Don’t you feel connected to a certain place, may be a certain land? BC: The impermanence of each and every inhabited site does not allow me to seek a land to stand upon and feel at home. What we call locative reality is highly contested at this point of time, sensitised by augmented spaces of hyper-connectedness to other places through ubiquitously mediated and manufactured presences; I feel that my awareness of the immediate place-based reality is merged with the invisible but felt virtual presence of many other places experienced at once, making each situation volatile and ephemeral.  

BC: I was asking about a certain place… BC: The place I was born, that is where I feel connected to, and in love with. But that feeling is challenged by the fact that I am also trying to get rid of that sense of love by repeated exposure of the place in my works; some of my artworks stem out of field recording made in that region over many years; and these exposures are nothing but efforts to cope with forgetting, to re-arrange memory associations, to fit into the contemporary; however, these efforts remain vague and questionable in their methodology and outcome.

BC: Do you have anything to say about love? BC: For me, love has been a transitory feeling of intense momentary cognition of the other. Strong may be, it never really has sustained itself. In the long run I would like to consider love as a form of collective and mutual compassion, but then the intensity needs to be compromised.

BC: Who is your hero? BC: Bond, James Bond.

BC: Why? BC: For exemplifying a capacity to ruthlessly execute cherished plans.

BC: What is your comment on the current state of affairs, namely dismantling of Europe, refugee crisis in the West, proliferation of suspicion and terror in the public life, socio-political crisis in the middle East, rising hyper-protectionism in the US etc., let alone the pervasive climate crisis? BC: Superiority complex is an incurable disease and deformity of the Western thinking. From imperialism to colonialism to unwanted attention and intervention in the middle East, the West and its allies (the US) have historically undermined the “other” – the non-Western civilisations. The West lacked adequate respect for whoever they considered coming from outside of their territory. On the excuse of colonialism, the West has set out to exploit, torture, and damage large parts of Asia and Africa without evidence of a sense of repentance. The deep ignorance and sectarian attitudes led the West to formulate the terms such as the “third world” considering the non-West as a lesser land. The current crisis is the consequences of all the atrocities the West has been performing over the non-Western world. This celebration of a make–believe self-importance, historic (hysteric) arrogance and a stupendous lack of conscience accumulated towards a grand opening for a great (moral) fall.  

BC: There are instances of collective resistance; what do you think of them? BC: These resistances are primarily rhetorical; actual resistances need to be put in place. Until and unless the Western society learns to respect the “others”, and nurture tolerance towards the people they call “foreigners” in their habitual land, these resistances will not have any substantial impact. Ask the people on the street taking a collective protest march - whether he and she in their own lives have interacted compassionately with constantly migrating people coming to their cities from outside; equality begins at your neighbourhood.

[budhaditya]

Shorter essay: “The Politics of Not-listening”, Sonic Field, November 2016.

http://sonicfield.org/2016/11/the-politics-of-not-listening/

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Shorter essay: “Ambient sound: presence, embodiment and the spatial turn”, Sonic Field, June 2016.

http://sonicfield.org/2016/06/ambient-sound-presence-embodiment-and-the-spatial-turn/

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Artists’ talk, The Gujral Foundation/The Creative Community, New Delhi, December 2016.

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Presentation: “Audible Absence: Ambient Sound in Practice,” International Conference: Sonologia 2016: Out of Phase, São Paulo, November 2016.

http://www2.eca.usp.br/sonologia/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Full-Programme-Sonologia-2016-Out-of-Phase.pdf

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Performance and reading: “A Nomad’s Guide to Listening“, Errant Sound, Berlin, October 2016.

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Artists’ talk and live concert performances in Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, October 2016.

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Talk: “Breaking the Wall of Sound“, Falling Walls Lab, Aarhus University, September 2016.

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New publication: “Endnotes on the Margin of Listening”, in Dirty Ear Report #1, Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, September 2016.

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Workshop: “Hyper-listening: Praxis“, University of Applied Arts Vienna, September 2016.

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Arithmetic of Distance in Helicotrema Festival 2016.

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Publication: “Being There: Evocation of the Site in Contemporary Indian Cinema”, Journal of Sonic Studies 12, Leiden University Press, July 2016.

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/286592/286593

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Publication: “Émergence de nouvelles conceptions sonores”, Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, June 2016.

http://psn.univ-paris3.fr/ouvrage/independance-des-cinemas-indiens-cartographie-des-formes-des-genres-des-regions#

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Presentation: “Beyond Matter: Object-disoriented Sound Art“, Sound Art Matters Conference, Aarhus,  June 2016.

http://conferences.au.dk/fileadmin/conferences/2016/Sound_Art_Matters/Final_Program_-_SAM16-web.pdf

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Presentation: “Unwriting Sound“, International Conference on Artistic Research, The Royal Academy of Art
 and Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, April 2016.

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/241154/241155/0/5165#writingandsound

[budhaditya]

Artist in residence, Q-O2, Brussels, April 2016.

http://www.q-o2.be/en/event/budhaditya-chattopadhyay/