Aragalaya: Inside the People’s Struggle in Colombo by Isuru Kumarasinghe, Devana Senanayake

Aragalaya: Inside the People’s Struggle in Colombo

Podcast

Episode 12 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode explores the creation of art during the political struggle that has shaped Sri Lanka and its capital Colombo since the start of 2022. Sound artist Isuru Kumarasinghe and journalist Devana Senanayake share the perspective of artists and musicians who either lived permanently or temporarily around the Gota Go Gama camp, one of the central sites of the protest.

The Aragalaya Struggle: A Very Brief Introduction

Since the start of 2022, Sri Lanka has been experiencing an economic crisis sparked by a lack of fuel and gas, electricity cuts, skyrocketing prices of food staples, and shortages of medicine. As the conditions worsened, quiet candle-lit vigils rose up around the country and they soon exploded into a series of larger, roadside protests.

In April 2022, a protest outside the president’s house in Mirihana, one of Colombo’s suburbs, led to the arrest of protestors, a declaration of a «state of emergency», and a social media ban. In response, protests proliferated throughout the country.

Protestors had multiple demands but the main one asked for the resignation of the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Chants that included the president’s nickname, Gota, such as «Go Home Gota», could be heard at the protests. People set up a camp that included medical tents, ambulances, food, a library, and an art center – all for free – in Colombo’s oceanside urban park, Galle Face Green. They named this site Gota Go Gama (Gota Go Village). During the protests, several other protest villages popped up in urban areas around the country.

Despite an attack on May 9, 2022 by a pro-state mob, arrest of protestors, and consistent disinformation, protestors achieved many things – the resignation of several Rajapaksa family members from the Cabinet, the resignation of prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and even the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa on July 9. After an early morning attack by police and the army on July 21, protestors received an order to leave Gota Go Gama on August 12. All of them followed this order and vacated the premises.

For further background information around the protests scroll down and check links.

Credits

A podcast by Isuru Kumarasinghe and Devana Senanayake

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

Featuring: King Ratnam, Anu Madhubhashinie, Dinupa Kodagoda, Ajith Kumarasiri, and Namini Panchala

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
Photography: Aaqill Nooramith

→ Full transcript of episode 12

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Musician and performer Dinupa Kodagoda speaking about her practice at the recording for the TIMEZONES podcast (photo: Devana Senanayake).

Featured Artists

King Ratnam is a director, actor, and musician. Currently he helps the Artists of the People’s Movement host marches as part of the people’s protests. Follow him on Twitter.

Anu Madhubhashinie is a vocalist, composer, and dancer. She has been trained in classical and Eastern practices in her music and dance. She was camping on-site at «Gota Go Gama». Follow her on Facebook or YouTube.

Dinupa Kodagoda is a vocalist, dancer, and an actress. She and her husband compose music about social issues related to human relationships and social justice. She has participated in several artists’ marches and contributed to the people’s protests this year. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or Spotify.

Ajith Kumarasiri has been a key figure in modern alternative music since the 1980s in Sri Lanka. He is committed to issues of social justice and human emancipation. Ajith engages with music in terms of a broader concept of sound as well as noise. Follow him on Youtube or Facebook.

Namini Panchala is a singer-songwriter, composer, and a film music director. She is committed to exploring activism through music, including with regards to women’s rights, animal rights, militarization, and equality. Follow her on Facebook or YouTube.

Bonus Talk

A Deeper Look into the Aragalaya (Struggle)
moderated by Janik Sittampalam, produced by Zainamb Wahid

Aragalaya: Inside the People’s Struggle in Colombo by Isuru Kumarasinghe, Devana Senanayake

In this bonus episode, we speak to Devana Senanayake and Isuru Kumarasinghe, the producers of the Colombo TIMEZONES episode on the protest music of the Aragalaya. The economic and political crisis has affected us all here in Sri Lanka, and we talk about living as artists during this tumultuous time. In these past few months, we have witnessed a cultural revolution in addition to the political one, and Devana and Isuru reflect on the process of documenting and capturing the spirit of the protest. We compare this modern movement to the radical movements of Sri Lanka’s past, and how the work we do today might shape how people think of this time in the years to come.

Janik Sittampalam is a writer and journalist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He mainly writes about history, culture, and philosophy, seeking the deeper connections lurking beneath the everyday. He also enjoys acting, both on and off stage.

Zainamb Wahid has studied at the SAE (School of Audio Engineering) Institute in Singapore. She has several years of experience as a radio producer and audio engineer, and has been employed in YES 101 and Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC). She is also a musician in the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and the Gustav Mahler Society, and conducts violin and piano lessons privately. Follow her on Facebook.

Playlist

Explore a playlist of artists from Colombo and their current releases. A mix of original Sri Lankan popular and underground tracks both by Sinhala and Tamil artists.

Curated by King Ratnam

Trailer

By Emma Nzioka

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

Isuru Kumarasinghe is a musician and sound artist from Sri Lanka and is based in Colombo. Through a listening practice his work focuses on the experience of sound perception and sound movements. He is a self-taught artist, who creates tools to transmit philosophies of listening, affect, and the relationship to the body into sound producing. He mainly works with electro-acoustic music improvisation, field recordings, as well as sound installations and performance. Kumarasinghe collaborates extensively with artists in the fields of music, dance, theater, and film, and is a co-founder of the Musicmatters collective in Colombo. He regularly produces music records and is currently co-founding the new producing studio Earscapes in Colombo. Facebook.

Biography

Devana Senanayake is a researcher, journalist, and producer who has experience in the U.K., Australia, and Sri Lanka. She has bylines in The Washington Post, Aljazeera, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. Her sound art has been published in Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow, and Interior Journal. Follow her on X, and on her Website.

Links

Devana Senanayake: «Inside Sri Lanka’s Unprecedented Mass Protests» (Foreign Policy)

Devana Senanayake: «Inside Sri Lanka’s Devastating Economic Crisis» (Foreign Policy)

Meera Srinivasan: «Janata Aragalaya, The Movement that Booted out the Rajapaksas» (The Hindu)

Marlon Ariyasinghe: «Notes on the Sri Lankan Struggle» (Himal Southasian)

Vajra Chandrasekera: «‹Aragalaya›: Situation Nominal, Tense Future» (Polity)

Isuru Kumarasinghe: Mixtape «Without Title» (Norient)

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Published on October 27, 2022

Last updated on October 12, 2023

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Protest

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Buenos Aires: Relations Condensed in Practice

Podcast

by Ailín Grad

Episode 13 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode examines how practices among friends help build networks to strengthen the explorations and works of artists while collectively building survival skills. The backdrop for this episode is the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, a very rich and complex city where mainstream spaces, venues, and cultural centers are playing a less than helpful role in the artistic scenes. It’s all about profit and not about culture, as producer Ailín Grad aka Aylu explains.

Notes from the Producer

Nevertheless, there are public cultural centers and public spaces in Buenos Aires that welcome and finance artistic practices. Yet self-created rules are always necessary, and small communities that connect with each other are essential. This city, like any big city in Latin America, is characterized by its mix of cultures, which is what fuels our creativity. We create with what we have, overcoming difficulties, and we marvel at every little thing that sparks inspiration. That’s how it feels here, where we insist on staying.

There’s a deeply rooted idea that self-care and individual growth is the only way to achieving happiness, stability, and success. In this TIMEZONES episode, we talk about how we connect with other people despite being bombarded with this premise.

#Being dependent on other people is not the same as being weak. We must acknowledge the fact that building our own networks to support our own rules is the most important thing we can invest our time and resources in right now. Do-it-yourself can be a utopia, but it can also be a misleading term when people simply cannot do it themselves. During the production of this episode, I came to realize that we support each other in our limitations and not just in our competences. That way, we not only amplify but also protect each other.

Credits

A podcast by Ailín Grad aka Aylu

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

Featuring: Elsa Justel, Miguel Garutti, Cecilia Castro, Rosa Nolly Bustos, Victoria Barca Opening piece by Aylu and AGF (feat. Constanza Castagnet) with a poem by AGF Includes a bonus talk, moderated and produced by Lola Granillo

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

→ Full transcript of episode 13

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Featured Artists

Elsa Justel, born in 1944, is a legendary electroacoustic composer. She has been composing acousmatic music for a long time and is also a prolific writer and thinker in this area. She lives in Mar del Plata, a city on the coast of Buenos Aires. Read a more detailed bio here and follow her on SoundCloud.

Miguel Garutti graduated in arts from the University of Buenos Aires where he currently works on his doctoral thesis on the history of electroacoustic music in Argentina in the 1970s. He studied composition and technology at the National University of Quilmes and the University of São Paulo (Brazil). He works on the preservation of audio tapes at the LIPM laboratory at the Recoleta Cultural Center and with Cecilia Castro (see below) at the UNQ Music and Sound Art Archive. Explore one of his audiovisual works on Vimeo and follow him on Instagram or Facebook.

Cecilia Castro is a composer of electroacoustic and acoustic music. She is a professor of electronic art at Tres de Febrero National University and runs the Fernando von Reichenbach Archive. This archive holds the material of Di Tella, one of the studios Miguel Garutti mentions in the podcast. Follow Cecilia Castro on her website, SoundCloud, Mixcloud, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.

Rosa Nolly Bustos is a composer, saxophonist, and sound designer. She participates in a wide aesthetic range between concert, experimental, and contemporary jazz as well as indie music. She produces musical arrangements and sound designs in collaboration with artists from other disciplines such as film, multimedia, and performing arts. She held artistic residencies in Latin America and Europe. Her works explore the hybridization of bodies and materialities, the organic and the political. Follow her on SoundCloud, Facebook, or Instagram.

Victoria Barca aka Vic Bang produces rhythmic and textured compositions using sample processing and virtual synthesizers. Her work captures the micro-sounds of the world, transforming them into unique sound sculptures. She has released records on labels such as Moon Glyph, Kit Records, and Abyss and has played live at numerous festivals and cultural venues in the Buenos Aires experimental music scene. Follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

Bonus Talk

Maybe a Method
moderated and produced by Lola Granillo

In the end, Buenos Aires is a port on the banks of a river.

When I met with Aylu, producer of TIMEZONES Buenos Aires, and contributor Cecilia Castro to record this bonus talk, there arose the memory of a historical event that changed our lives and our way of doing things as well as our sound. We currently experience a moment of increasing collective action and of the collective as a way of being and thinking in the face of the constant economic crisis in the region. In this bonus track, we talk about our common ghosts and fantasies as a population with a fairly large proportion of migrants and as people who live in a port city, with almost no other connection to the river than the supposed possibility of leaving in search of more resources, weighed against the importance of friendship and community.

Lola Granillo (born in La Rioja, Argentina, in 1983) is a multidisciplinary artist. She began her artistic career with the creation of an FM radio show featuring debates and encounters. As a composer, she has released two albums with songs. She also hosts a podcast that reflects on the consumption of tobacco and alcohol in the context of art and dissent. Listen to her podcast or her radio show and follow her on Bandcamp or Instagram.

Playlists

1. A selection of eclectic, experimental, electroacoustic music from Buenos Aires, Argentina. All these compositions explore the plasticity of sound. They take us by the ear and into hallucinations that are as beautiful as they are chaotic, noisy, or delirious. To be released on Spotify December 7, 2022.

Curated by Vic Bang

2. A little collection of pieces by all the artists interviewed in this episode. Most of the tracks appear as part of the music and sound design. There’s a mix of recent and older works, from electronic to acoustic and processed instruments. A small glimpse into Buenos Aires’ electroacoustic and experimental music scene.

Curated by Ailín Grad aka Aylu

Tracklist

The following tracks are part of the podcast mix. Listed in order of appearance.

Aylu and AGF feat. Constanza Castagnet: «strike/huelga/streik/lakko!»
Elsa Justel: «Yegl»
Aylu: «Whistle»
Miguel Garutti: «Flex»
Aylu: «Arancione»
Miguel Garutti: «Diamante con pelos»
Aylu: «Y_Y»
Cecilia Castro: «12 Dedos»
Cecilia Castro and Astrosuka: «Roma III»
Cecilia Castro: «Para Eliza»
Cecilia Castro: «Worm»
Cecilia Castro: «Para Eliza»
Rosa Nolly Bustos: «Polar»
María Elena Walsh: «Canción especial introduction (Electroacoustic Version by Rosa Nolly Bustos and Ailín Grad)»
Vic Bang: «Orurro»
Vic Bang: «Arp»
Aylu: «Cristal I»
La Vibrazona: «Vivo en el campo»
Vic Bang: «Orurro»
Vic Bang: «Lira macho»
María Elena Wals: «Canción especial introduction (Electroacoustic Version by Rosa Nolly Bustos and Ailín Grad)»
Cecilia Castro: «Worm»
Elsa Justel: «Yegl»

Trailer

By Emma Nzioka

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

Biography

Ailín Grad aka Aylu designs audio spaces from Buenos Aires and is mostly known for potent psychotropic juke and footwork experiments. Aylu takes ordinary objects and sounds and pieces them together into electro-acoustic systems: slender gears feathering in complex geometries. Aylu’s works are a small system of electroacoustic pieces. Gears, geometries, instruments, and designs of a fuzzy and unexpected space. She tries to explore different materials and their textures, seeking to resignify sounds that belong to our daily listening and to the soundscapes surrounding us.

Published on November 24, 2022

Last updated on October 12, 2023

Topics

Community

DIY

All Topics

Special

TIMEZONES

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DIY or Die: Budapest Beneath the Surface by Lucia Udvardyová

DIY or Die: Budapest Beneath the Surface

Podcast

by Lucia Udvardyová,

Máté Elod Janky

Episode 11 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. Conceived in the wake of Hungary’s latest parliamentary elections in April 2022 which reinforced the Orbán government’s grip on power for an unknown number of years, this episode aims to delve into the city’s independent (i.e. non-government funded) arts and music scene.

While the title of this episode (DIY or Die), alluding to the DIY aesthetics and bricolage methods of the punk scene, might sound rather succinct and harsh, these are the conditions the Budapest cultural scene mostly operates in. The podcast opens with Gáspár Miklós Tamás whom I visited in his centrally located Budapest apartment where I, irony of ironies, apparently sat in a chair the Hungarian prime minister used to sit in back when his political orientation was «slightly» different.

We then move on to Gólya, a space that hosts live music, DJ sets and workshops as well as several NGOs and media outlets operating in an increasingly hostile environment. It is the epitome of this DIY, community-, and collectively run philosophy. For the Buharov brothers, freedom and independence are indispensable. They gained international recognition despite being largely shunned by local arts funding. Their films draw you into an opulent, often absurdist and surrealist world whose protagonists are largely sourced from the Buharov brothers’ colorful array of artistic friends from various corners of the city’s underground scene. Ivan, one of the Buharov brothers, is featured in this podcast.

Last but not least, there is of course humor, something that hasn’t evaporated despite all the doom and gloom. MAGA1-like red caps with the white inscription «Eastern European Accent» are frequently spotted at various Budapest events. They can be traced to the band Exotic Girlfriend, whose lead singer Andi Soós is also a curator. I also meet Gábor Kovács aka Új Bála in his Buda flat and we conduct our interview surrounded by boxes and empty walls. Gábor is moving to Brussels in search of a better life and to pursue his musical activities. Many people are talking about leaving, exhausted and fed up with waiting for systemic change. Then again: «You just have to go and do it, wherever you can», says visual artist Lilla Lőrinc.

Credits

A podcast by Lucia Udvardyová, sound design by Máté Elod Janky

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

Featuring: Gáspár Miklós Tamás, Marci Bíró, Nándor Hevesi aka Ivan Buharov, Andi Soós, Gábor Kovács aka Új Bála, and Lilla Lőrinc

→ Full transcript of episode 11

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Featured Artists

Gáspár Miklós Tamás, known under his moniker TGM, is a Romanian-born, Budapest-based philosopher and public intellectual. He has contributed to a number of media such as Mérce and Open Democracy, where he primarily devoted himself to political and aesthetic questions. His books have been published in several languages, including English, French, and German.

Marci Bíró is a Budapest-based musician and cultural manager. He is one of the main forces behind the Gólya club (as he says in our interview, the space is of course run on an equitable basis, but still – you can’t take Marci out of Gólya, nor Gólya out of Marci). He has also been active in the community-run music hub Kripta. Besides cultural management, he is also a (hyper)active musician connected to several Budapest (punk) and other bands. When he’s not running around the spaces he runs, he can be found in a van touring Europe’s finest DIY spaces. Follow him on his website or on Bandcamp.

Nándor Hevesi aka Ivan Buharov is a Budapest-based filmmaker and musician. Together with Kornél Szilágyi, he established the artistic duo Igor and Ivan Buharov, active in the fields of film, performance, visual arts, and music. Their cinematic world is soaked in surrealism and magic, buoyed by the use of Super 8 and 16 mm cameras. Their latest film is called Land of Warm Waters. They also compose the pieces of experimental music that accompany their films. Follow him on his website.

Gábor Kovács is a Budapest/Brussels-based musician and visual artist as well as an alumni artist of the SHAPE platform. Active in a number of projects, he works with a wide range of genres and sounds, although his main output is Új Bála. Új Bála merges noise, psychedelia, and fringes of techno, summoning the rhythmic skeletons of dance music to bring order to his backdrop of mangled synth noises. In the past couple of years, Új Bála has released works on labels such as Plaque, Baba Vanga, Altered States Tapes, Czaszka Rec., Lost Dogs Entertainment, or Tanzprocesz and performed at various festivals, clubs, and DIY spaces across Europe. Follow Új Bála on Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Facebook, or Instagram.

Andi Soós is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Budapest. She is currently a PhD candidate in design culture studies at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. In 2018, she and Noémi Varga founded the band Exotic Girlfriend. Inspired by heartbreaks, transatlantic romances, and misunderstood text messages, the band reflects on the challenges and joys of being an Eastern European woman: combining lo-fi, indie-pop music with ironic lyrics that tell real stories from a female perspective. Follow her on her website, Spotify, Instagram, or YouTube.

Lilla Lőrinc is a visual artist and cultural worker based in Budapest, Hungary. With a longstanding presence in the Hungarian contemporary art scene as part of the artist duo Lőrinc Borsos and with strong ties to art quarter budapest, an independent art centre, she is interested in exploring the frontiers of interdisciplinarity, community-driven artistic approaches, and experience-centered event creation. Follow her on her website.

Bonus Talk

How Does a Power Plant Go on Working?
moderated by Krisztián Puskár

General political disillusionment and the shadow of financial crisis are a heavy burden in the 13th year of Viktor Orbán’s regime, causing general burnout and escapism not just in Hungarian society but in Budapest’s supposedly critical underground music and art scenes.

TIMEZONES Budapest’s producer Lucia Udvardyova, experimental/metal drummer Balázs Pándi and moderator Krisztián Puskár discuss how the rise of the state-funded «House of Music, Hungary» created a rift in the music community, how the system feeds on these conflicts, and how Udvardyova’s report about Hungary’s nationalist rock scene, made ten years ago, inspired her decision to revisit the acclaimed leftist philosopher in this episode made for Norient and the Goethe-Institut.

What are the limitations of talking about politics in art and everyday life? Is leaving the country a real alternative? Is the infrastructure of Budapest’s music underground prepared or equipped for the existential crisis that is approaching as we speak?

DIY or Die: Budapest Beneath the Surface by Lucia Udvardyová

Balázs Pándi is a drummer and former promoter with roots and formative years in metal and punk music as well as many international collaborations in the experimental and improv jazz field, including projects with Merzbow, Keiji Haino, Mats Gustaffson, Thurston Moore, Attila Csihar, KK Null, Jim Jarmusch, etc. He also works as a journalist. Follow him on Instagram or Discogs.

Krisztián Puskár is a journalist, editor, media worker, organizer, curator of UH Fest, radio host at Punctum (Prague) and Lahmacun (Budapest), and occasional DJ. Follow him on Instagram.

Playlist

Explore a playlist with a selection of tracks from the city’s underground producers.

Curated by Lucia Udvardyová

Trailer

by Emma Nzioka

1. Make America Great Again.

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

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on Instagram, and on her Website.

Biography

Máté Elod Janky is a Budapest-based borderline musician and visual artist. His work is characterized by the observation of digital textures and motifs and the reinterpretation of their environmental and spatial qualities. He also runs Daddypower Records, an independent label dedicated to experimental arts. Follow him on his Website.

Published on September 29, 2022

Last updated on October 12, 2023

Topics

Censorship

DIY

All Topics

Special

TIMEZONES

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