Sven Christian [SC]: Kaushal came into residence a week before Thuthuka. During their stay we ended up speaking about different books that we were reading. There was this mutual interest in the sonic; about audio and how it functions. Thuthuka lent me a copy of Brandon LaBelle’s Sonic Agency (2018), for an essay that I’ve been writing on Reshma Chhiba and Kamyar Bineshtarigh’s work. I was taken by his ideas around sound as a migratory form, but what are your respective interests in the sonic?

Thuthuka Sibisi [TS]: I come from a musical background. I studied classical voice, opera, and conducting. After graduating I found myself working across mediums. I started working with a visual artist, William Kentridge. Initially it was peripheral — writing and editing scores — but it got to a point where we were collaborating and I was creating sounds for a lot of his theatre and outdoor works. That said, I consider myself a reluctant composer. I struggle with the idea of being a composer because a lot of the time we have to identify with these markers and stick to them. I tend to move between methods of making, so I don’t always identify with the sonic, but I do think of myself as a language maker: I use the sonic as a material, moving between theatre, installation, and now dance.

The work I’m doing at NIROX is more sculptural. I’m still figuring out the language of it, but in terms of making I’m quite traditional. Kaushal can speak for himself, but his approach feels a lot more electronic. I would sit and watch how he creates sound. A lot of the time it was like, ‘If you add this with this, move this over there, and press this plus that, you’ll get that.’ It looks fun, but it’s a very different language to my own. I’ll wake up and sit at the piano, trying to carve out notes. That’s my journey to music and how I use it. My time at NIROX involved a lot of questioning: what’s the next step? Is there another way to position sound next to an object, or to think about sound as an object, or use an object to make sound?

SC: In your proposal you write about trying to marry sound and object, without betraying either medium. Like Kaushal, there’s an interest in the mechanics of a particular thing. I’ll play your composition Coda (2019) for everyone, but first I want to provide some context to the work that you were planning in residence. You spent a lot of time reading, making sketches, taking walks in the park. Eventually you landed on the idea of placing bowls in the ground — some large, some small — through which to play a new composition. In terms of location, you found this inlet between two water bodies, so one would have to step into this space with intent and lean into these bowls to listen. Coda is one composition that you shared, as a sample for the kind of composition one would hear.

[Coda plays]


SC: Thuthuka, while listening I saw this line scribbled in your notes: ‘The ability to affect or be affected.’ Can you talk about this?

TS: I was thinking about the aim of sound — what is it? Sound is all around us. It’s constantly coming at us. How do I arrive at a point of silence to be able to be effected by something that is so consuming, so ever-present? How does one “zone in”? That led to the idea of this bowl and having to kneel to listen; the effect of bringing yourself to this point of submissiveness and what happens in that experience. I also think a lot about the why: why do I have a female lament over a male voice, in falsetto, speaking about a black heart? Is it just affect or is something else happening? It’s like, what’s the use of music? Why sing certain things in a certain way? And why do we hear things in ways that elicits certain feelings? I was also thinking about the responsibility of certain sounds and how they combine to create something. 



SC: Kaushal, in an earlier conversation you spoke about your experience when buying these wireless, bluetooth headphones; about putting them in your ears and how one’s soundscape shifts. I don’t think it’s unlike Thuthuka asking people to bend down and put their head in a bowl to actively listen. There’s an intent there; this process of listening to certain things, amplifying them, or blocking others out — it’s something that feels apparent in your work too.

Kaushal Sapre [KS]: This act of leaning into the bowls is also quite ritualistic or communal. That strikes a chord, in terms of this lament coming from below the earth… I’m very curious about what kind of sound would come out of the sculpture?

TS: For me it refers to the cosmic and mythological as a way of accessing other kinds of affects that potentially take us somewhere else… We spoke about this at one point, Kaushal. You were talking about fire and this origins myth; how the sonic might access a metaphysical plane. It’s here that the ritualistic act of listening, or the active participation of the listener in the making process, is structured into the use of these bowls and the act that comes with it. Even though the mechanics of our making are so very different, the language that we use, or at least the narrative forms that we come to as a point of departure, are kind of in sync.

KS: My own entry into sound is quite different. I’m not a trained musician. Whatever I’ve picked up is incidental. I played the piano for the first time in residence. During those two months, Thuthuka would practice in the afternoon. I would then go into the music room and noodle a bit in the evenings. Coming back to Delhi, there’s a tiny keyboard at home that I keep playing. I’ve developed this interest in the piano that was generated through this experience at NIROX, but my entry into thinking about sound is coupled with an interest in computer programming, and later, an interest in the voice, which is something we share. The material I was working with was this documentary made by the Films Division of India called Man in Search of Man (1974). This Indian film crew, made up of anthropologists, go on an expedition to make contact with some tribes who live on these islands in the Bay of Bengal. The other is constantly being invoked, whether based on curiosity, fascination, or some idea of friendship; the voice alone seems to carry it. You mention objects and sound next to each other, but when you remove the image and just keep the sound, the meaning often changes.


SC: You’re both prone to layering. You work with cut ups, enjoy re-contextualising things…

TS: Earlier you touched on the manipulation of fact; to be able to move things at will. Kaushal, you talk about changing contexts to rethink the conditions of what is said or perceived. There’s something interesting about the omniscience of the author — to take at will and do as you please, then pass it on as the truth. So I think of layering as a tool. On ProTools, for instance, I can record two things and move them around. For me it’s about subverting my musical education; trying to break the chains of classical Western form, which is all about structure, cadence, and the hierarchy of alto, soprano, bass… Layering becomes this puzzle that you can manipulate. I could use chord structures from Western classical music but then have Zulu singing, or a narrator’s voice speaking underneath it. I’m not very structured when I do this — I experiment — but there’s something about creating a multiplicity of truths, or at least, a plurality through polyphony; using instruments that are not recognised as having much power within a colonial / postcolonial gaze… The idea of a black female or male voice having this important role within a form that is so rigid feels subversive, but again, using sound as material. It has this tangibility.

SC: Kaushal, you’ve spoken elsewhere about trying to subvert this optical regime and its demand on the eye. It feels similar to what Thuthuka is saying about the rigidity of Western classical music. Your focus is perhaps more on spectacle, though. Of the four prints you made here, two are based on a creation-myth narrative from the mid ‘90s, the other two from the inauguration of the new Parliament building in Delhi earlier this year…

KS: I still look at them as works-in-progress, but when I think of the method used to arrive at this point, there’s some kind of scraping off in addition to the layering. In both cases, the image starts with something that is broadcast on TV. It’s then culled from that context and fed through this programme that manipulates it, replacing pixels with ASKI characters. It’s this world that you can make sense of through these signifiers, which come together to build the facade of the image. It’s also fascinating that this god-like narrator keeps appearing, because it was a common motif in a lot of TV shows back in the ‘90s. Then, there was always this omniscient narrator — ‘I am time’ or some other personification who sees everything play out on earth. In this particular story, one such figure produces different elements, like fire. I was interested in how the narrative gets held together by these symbols. In terms of the political situation in India today, media spectacles tend to fuel hate speech narratives, be it Modi’s inauguration of the Parliament building or the upcoming elections. You can sense the fantasy of a whole — this glorious past which has now come back. Such narratives are held together through a layering of symbols, but they’re also extremely fragile, and extremely contingent. For me, the symbols also invoke this 2000s tech vibe. I’m still trying to ingest what that means. Maybe that’s one of the discomforts in trying to think about how I can work on them further. There’s an ongoing conversation with friends about the relationship between technology and magic. Maybe special effects is where these things overlap; magic as a technology that you have not yet understood…

TS: I was thinking about how one can use code to create an image, this façade, but only if you can understand that language. There’s a parallel between such digital tech and African spiritual technologies. I’m still trying to figure it out, but one has to know the language in order to construct the world so that you can see it, right? Part of my thing right now is to make seen what is unheard or make heard what is unseen. I’m trying to dabble in a language that is yet to be constructed or understood. It comes back to shifting contexts. The context in this instance is the gaze. As a way of seeing, the sonic immediately taps into a space that we cannot access through sight. Somehow the frequency drives the language making and eventually builds the world and access to it. Part of the residency, for me, was to just sit in that thought, without a goal, and to let it bloom into something.

SC: All your compositions feel expansive. They fill the room enough for one to move through them. Kaushal on the other hand cuts things up in order to move through them, so manoeuvrability seems quite important to both of you?

KS: A lot of our conversations were also about expectations: this idea of productivity and what it means to come into this extremely comfortable, but also very isolated, space. You have everything, you have a lot of time — how does it translate in terms of expectations? At the end of the day you’re there because of certain institutional pathways, but you also have expectations of yourself. Working with radio_roohafvza, there’s this thing of, ‘It’s ok to keep low expectations,’ but you the server also needs to always be online.

TS: It’s about value systems, productivity, and goal-orientation, right? Within that ambit, what do we think of making silence, as a sonic quality that speaks both volumes and nothing? I’m thinking about John Cage’s 4′33″ (1952) and the idea of performing silence. What are your thoughts, Kaushal, on the use of silence in your work?

KS: For me it’s very straightforward. When you listen, you’re silent, to some extent. Since arriving back to Delhi, there have been a few of these talks, some of which a few friends and I have helped organise. At the end of each the floor is opened up to the audience. Sometimes it’s silent, which can be uncomfortable, but I keep thinking about who gets to talk and what it means to occupy space with one’s voice. I also find value in receding. It depends from context to context, but I’m still trying to think about how I use it in my work. I often produce some kind of excess, in terms of loudness — filling up the space — but I’m trying to learn to listen more. Coming to Johannesburg and meeting a bunch of artists and musicians, asking them to participate in a jam at LDMM… It's helped with this. Play music with a bunch of other people requires a bit of a balancing act, especially when you have to give space. There is an active listening which, in some sense, governs how you produce that dynamic. Often it’s very important to learn to recede and to give space.

TS: There’s something intriguing about radio silence too. When you’re not online, is the off button the silence? What is dead sound? What does it mean to sound silence? That white noise is a type of silence, a quiet, but it’s not silence. For it to feel dead or quiet or silent or soft, it has to interface with a body, because the body determines the quality of that silence. Do you know what I mean?

KS: I understand it is as a framing device. That’s how I read John Cage’s piece too. What happens before? The videos documenting it online are interesting as performances. The pianist turns the pages as they go through each movement… There’s an occasion that is being produced, to be silent, so it has something to do with framing.

SC: At the start of this conversation we spoke about using headphones — putting them in your ears to listen to one thing and mute the world around you… With the Ambedkar broadcast on radio_roohafvza, you actively choose to silence all the noise that comes with a platform like YouTube and amplify his voice. It’s reactivated in a new context. So there’s a framing here too.

KS: Suvani [Suri] is in the audience. Earlier this year she went down this research rabbit-hole about these led earplugs that were invented around the late-nineteenth century. When recording technologies first came to India, a lot of the voices being recorded were those of upper caste people, but the technicians who were making the recordings came from the so-called repressed castes. They were given these led earplugs so that they could not hear the Sanskrit mantras that were being recorded in the other room. They were made to endure silence, in order to produce these vinyl recordings. The curious thing is that these devices weren’t altogether silent; they would produce a reverberation of that sound. There’s a violence within that silence that is important to think about.

TS: It’s fascinating how it now becomes optical, because you’re making invisible what is visible. As the person telling you that you cannot hear this, I’m essentially moving you out of the conversation, making you invisible from what is now party between other people. It’s similar, in reverse, to the effect of having cellphones at the dinner table… There’s this apparition in the room. By texting somebody who is not at the table, you create them in the space. They become part of it. So I find it really interesting how the immaterial can make material, and vice versa.

SC: It’s also apparent in this Zoom, where some videos are on, and others are off; some microphones on, others muted. I can feel the presence of people watching, listening. If they were to activate their videos now and we were to turn ours off it would shift the nature of this space.

TS: Earlier we were talking about technologies and I think about the spirit or ghost of music making, or the ghost of this tool… It moves in a similar way to language, in how we identify with and make sense of it. I know it’s there, but I cannot see it, so can I trust it?


SC: I guess now would be a good time to open this up to the audience. Are there any comments or questions?

Mohit Shelare [MS]: I recently bought these noise cancellation headphones. I think the product itself has a certain ideology embedded in it. You can listen to specific things that you want to hear. At the same time, noise from the world outside has been cancelled. It says something about the practice of listening. It’s not about somebody not being able to listen, or somebody being highly vocal, but there’s some sort of selection being made.

KS: I like this point about the object carrying some kind of ideology.

MS: Recently a friend and I were talking about this paper, an interview with Ambedkar by this film director. He said he had seen very few films in his life, and that it was a very unfortunate situation, but that he saw this film or voice as an apparatus to capture this superstitious method of producing myths, and that the technology did not relate to where it was taking place. So there’s this collapse of magic and technology in building superstition. A figure immediately appears, and vanishes just as quickly.

SC: How does that sit with you, Thuthuka? I’m thinking about all the tech that will be required to make your installation watertight / weatherproof, and for the sound to work?

TS: Mohit was talking about technology as a conduit, right? It’s a catalyst for a seed and goal. Thinking about a voice, the seed is the initial phonation. A megaphone is a conduit to amplify that voice; it’s an ancillary tool that could be done away with, but the goal is for someone to receive the sound at the other end. If we remove technology, do we then say that the apparition or myth disappears? Does the spirit of what is said vanish too? Coming back to the idea of affect and effect, it seems like, within the ritual of bowing down to actively listen, you will instinctively be taken on a journey. Whether you know the language of the music or not, there’s something about music summoning something that lives on a metaphysical plane. I’m still trying to figure out if tech is part of the soundscape, but I know that it has an immense impact on how this message is made, transmitted, and received. I don’t think it effects what the message is, and that’s why I think that it’s an auxiliary. The voice, message, or effect should be primary. When we think about sangoma spiritual songs or trance, the body serves as the conduit between the metaphysical and the physical. In this instance, the body could be equivalent to a sound box that connects a speaker to the output source. Does that make sense?

SC: Again, there’s this relationship between an active and passive body. Kaushal will take something that’s intended for passive consumption — where you’re listening and looking and absorbing in a particular way — and actively break it apart, open it up, to make listening active once more. Something similar happens when you force your audience to lean in.

Suvani Suri [SS]: Both sound pieces that were played of Thuthuka’s were fascinating. There’s an engulfing that happens in both, this thickness. It made me think about what you were saying about opening up into somewhere else. I was also thinking, because hearing is also something that I have personally been doing a lot of in my own work, and I was thinking about how, like you mentioned about this dislocation that hearing produces, where there’s a dislocation of authorship, but in the process there is also a laying claim, on another kind of authorship, on another kind of voice or image or elsewhere. I was wondering, in both pieces, the one is the voice, the lament, the humm. In the other you’re also playing a lot with speech and speech acts. So, do you feel like there’s a difference in the way that each of those accesses the metaphysical plane, as you put it?

TS: I don’t know if this is going to answer your question, but I think a lot about re-membering and remembering. There’s something about certain African traditional songs that are in the act of re-membering and remembering. I’d sit in studio and ask a singer to sing a lullaby from her childhood. In that process, I’d move it into another voice group and ask another singer to sing it. In that shift, there’s a dislocation of where it sits in the body and where it sits in the psyche. Through that, and I’d like to think that there’s a point of access between the body and mind, and then what sits above it, so if you then sing this lullaby you’re locating it in your mind, which then locates it in your heart, and that travels towards the body that once sang it to you. There’s a point of both remembering and then locating, and then, once you shift it into another body, that re-membering and dislocating transmutes or potentially… I say transmutes because I think there’s an alchemy that happens in that re-embodying of something that belongs somewhere else. Again, the gap that’s created both physically, by me transferring to you, but also, in how the gap between the body that once sang it to you, to the body that then receives it, to then potentially connect it to a body that they would sort of know… There’s something interesting about the voice. If we think of it as the first primal instrument, from how it creates itself, from the initial act of phonation to the expulsion of the sound, the way that it traverses for me, that movement can be both physicalised and psychically placed; that you can name it in your body, where a sound comes from. When you’re feeling pain, it’s a gut feeling that tells you what that moment was. Or it’s kind of like, you’re talking too much so now my head is starting to ring. There’s a physicalising of it, and in locating it in that way, there’s somewhere that it can also locate itself afterwards, into the psyche and the metaphysical. I spend a lot of time trying to find a language or texture or tone that can worm its way from one place to another, both physically between bodies, but also intrabodily.