Technology – The New Normal for Dhaka’s Artists by BLKBX

Technology – The New Normal for Dhaka’s Artists

Podcast

Episode 8 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode is produced by the Bangladeshi artist duo BLKBX and delves into Dhaka’s arts scenes. It features the city’s transformation towards digitization and the ramifications for artists living and working in the metropole.

Dhaka serves as the container of 20 million souls – surviving day to day, yet never failing to smile. It’s probably the world’s least known capital, yet it is a melting pot of joy and fear bundled with hope. There’s a lot happening in Dhaka and the sonic arts do not find themselves isolated from these changes. The city’s transformation towards digitization is not necessarily due to a propagandistic portrayal but to the sheer necessity of survival.

Amidst the chaos of navigating everyday challenges for everyday people, the digital world serves as a new form of escape. However, for artists, this dependence can be an impediment – and the creative juices get thrown around in a blender that combines media, art, and technology.

In this episode, Dhaka’s artists speak about their personal motivations and processes in the pursuit of art, knowing the challenges ahead. They shed light on how the pandemic has shaped, or perhaps reshaped, the thought process of making art and how technology can be deemed the new normal for them.

With a growing underground scene for electronic artists, the city is on the verge of its next domino effect that will create a musical revolution, much like its predecessor rock music – one that was by its people and for its people. The artists zoom out from their comfort zone to explore new dimensions fuelled by creativity and discuss how this will change how we perceive and make art.

A podcast by BLKBX

Co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut

Featuring: Sounak Das, Shadwaan Chowdhury, Nazifa Raidah, Muttaki Mahmud

Artistic Editor: Suvani Suri
Project Management: Hannes Liechti
Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson
Jingle Mix: Daniel Jakob
Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs
Artwork: Šejma Fere
Video Trailer: Emma Nzioka

→ Full transcript of episode 8

Listen On

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Featured Artists

Sounak Das is a multimedia artist based Dhaka, Bangladesh; predominantly using photography, moving images, sound, and installation. His practice renders ideas along the omnipresent lingering landscapes and aspects of urban scenarios, with minimal representations of the convenient elements of time.

Shadwaan Chowdhury is a guitarist and producer from Dhaka working with Ableton Live looping.

Nazifa Raidah is a music enthusiast who dreams of a Bangladesh with a booming music industry. She’s a writer with a distinguished background in Rabindra Sangeet, ready to take on the world of the unknown.

Muttaki Mahmud is the founder of 3rd Space, an open-for-all platform dedicated to promoting arts and culture in Dhaka.

Playlist

Explore a playlist of artists featured in the TIMEZONES Dhaka podcast episode, their collaborators, and their peers in the Dhaka community.

Curated by Nafis Ahmed

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? The artists’ thoughts on their moods, their social, political, and intellectual realities and their philosophies (of life) have been worked up into experimental audio collages.

The podcasts run the gamut of formats and content, from straight journalism to experimental and documentary approaches, ethnography and fiction, sound art, and improvisation. The TIMEZONES series endeavours to create new artistic forms of storytelling, listening and exchange across the boundaries of geography, time zones, genres, and practices.

The TIMEZONES podcast series is co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut.

This episode is supported by:

Biography

BLKBX is an experimental audiovisual endeavour aiming to enable artists and curators from different walks of life to come together and venture into new worlds of creative ideas. Follow them on their Website.

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The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? Season 2 focuses on Beirut, Montréal, Dhaka, Mt Makiling, and Gaza.

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TIMEZONES – Season 3

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Published on January 27, 2022

Last updated on October 12, 2023

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Ears on/of Makiling by meLê yamomo, Nono Pardalis

Ears on/of Makiling

Podcast

by meLê yamomo,

Nono Pardalis

Episode 9 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode explores the stories and sounds of Mount Makiling, located 80 kilometres South of the Philippine capital of Manila. Makiling is the sacred site of local legends, the setting for numerous classical works of literature, and a pilgrimage destination for many mystics. And it is the home of many artists and arts students.

The University of the Philippines Los Baños was established in 1909, covering one side of the mountain. In 1977, Imelda Marcos, the notorious dictator’s wife, built the National Arts Center and the Philippine High School for the Arts on its slopes.

For many Filipino artists, the mountain is the ground in which their artistic roots were planted – despite moving back to the urban metropolises, to other islands of the archipelago, or to other continents, the mountain is a wormhole through which many artists’ pasts and presents intertwine. Makiling is the constant drone and its winds and rains the ostinati that their present and future experiences of nature, the forest, art, theater, poetry, and music are tuned to.

A podcast by meLê yamomo and Nono Pardalis

Co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut

Featuring: Datu Arellano, Donna Cher dela Cruz, Dennis Gupa, Karlene Moreno Hayworth, Reagan Romero Maiquez, Nono Pardalis, and meLê yamomo

Artistic Editor: Abhishek Matur
Project Management: Hannes Liechti
Video Trailer: Emma Nzioka
Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson
Jingle Mix: Daniel Jakob
Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs
Artwork: Šejma Fere
Video Trailer: Emma Nzioka

→ Full transcript of episode 9

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Featured Artists

Datu Arellano is a visual artist, musician, designer, retired front-end web developer, educator, and has been an active member of the Anino Shadowplay Collective since 1997. As a practitioner, he straddles multiple contexts of visual and performing arts and works within the traditional forms of drawing, painting, and sculpture; the experimental aspects of sound design, music, and video; and the commercial contexts of graphic design. He lives and works in Quezon City and Manila.

Donna Cher dela Cruz received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2002, majoring in Speech Communication, and her Bachelor of Laws from the Arellano University School of Law in 2008. In 2009, she became a managing partner of the law firm Dela Cruz & Cabahug Law Offices. In 2011, she joined the Supreme Court of the Philippines as a court attorney in the Office of the Chief Attorney. She is currently a court attorney in the Office of Associate Justice Jose Midas P. Marquez. Donna is a faculty member of the Manila Adventist College School of Law and Jurisprudence where she teaches legal writing and a graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts, Mt Makiling, Los Baños, Laguna, where she spent four years as an art scholar majoring in music (piano). She is married to artist Datu Arellano; they have three sons.

Dennis Gupa is a theater director and assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg’s theater and film department. He is an SSHRC Vanier scholar and received his PhD in applied theater at the University of Victoria. His research interest is on the intersection of climate change, indigenous ecological knowledge, and applied theater. He obtained an MFA degree in theater (directing) from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Theater Arts at the University of the Philippines. His intercultural and multidisciplinary directing works have been exhibited in North America and Southeast Asia. He is included in The Cultural Centre of the Philippines’ Encyclopedia of Philippine Arts (Theatre Volume) for his contribution to the contemporary theatrical heritage of the Philippines.

Karlene Moreno Hayworth is a soprano singer who graduated from the Philippine High School for the Arts on a full scholarship and received a Bachelor’s degree in music from University of the Philippines with magna cum laude honors. She continued her postgraduate training at the Royal Northern College of Music and The Associated Studios in London. Awards include the second prize in the National Music Competition for Young Artists and the grand prize in the McDonald’s Makabata Awards Special Child Achievers Category. She is currently a member of the Philharmonia Chorus. Outside the classical music world, Karlene was a weekly student DJ/radio presenter for 97.1 WLSFM (GMA Network), a top-rated pop music station.

Reagan Romero Maiquez is a writer, researcher, and teacher with a background in creative writing, anthropology, psychology, Philippine theater and performance studies. He has taught writing and literary studies and produced theatrical works and interdisciplinary research at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños. His poetry volume Ilang Sandali Makalipas ang Huling Araw ng Mundo (A Few Moments After the Apocalypse) was published by University of the Philippines Press. He has worked in community theater with African, Karen, and Filipino migrants and refugees in Melbourne and is working on community development projects.

Bonus Talk

Makiling’s Silence: A Memory, a Source, a Force of Creative Lives and Ceaseless Meanderings
moderated and produced by Dayang Yraola

Dayang Yraola, a Manila-based teacher, curator, sound artist, and sound archivist, retrieves her long-lost memories of living in Mt. Makiling in Los Baños, Laguna, in the early 2000s. She engaged in a conversation with three alumni of the Philippine High School for the Arts, the school at the heart of Mt Makiling, namely meLê yamomo, a Europe-based scholar and artist; Donna Cher dela Cruz, a Manila-based lawyer; and Nono Pardalis, a Laguna-based writer. Sharing their individual memories helped the participants of this Bonus Talk locate the place of Mt Makiling in many past and present episodes of their lives and their practice.

Ears on/of Makiling by meLê yamomo, Nono Pardalis

Dayang Yraola is an associate professor and curator of the Fine Arts Gallery at the University of the Philippines. She is the founder and lead curator of the art project series Project Glocal and Composite Noises. You can visit her website here.

Playlist

Explore a playlist of artists featured in the TIMEZONES Mt Makiling podcast episode, their collaborators, and their peers in the Filipino community.

Curated by Datu Arellano

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? The artists’ thoughts on their moods, their social, political, and intellectual realities and their philosophies (of life) have been worked up into experimental audio collages.

The podcasts run the gamut of formats and content, from straight journalism to experimental and documentary approaches, ethnography and fiction, sound art, and improvisation. The TIMEZONES series endeavours to create new artistic forms of storytelling, listening and exchange across the boundaries of geography, time zones, genres, and practices.

The TIMEZONES podcast series is co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut.