Hemant Sreekumar, a sound artist from Bengaluru, released Content, his eight-track album, in a cassette (apart from uploading it online). His choice of medium has more to do with subversion than throwback. “It is one way to sidestep the comment-share culture of streaming services,” he says, “The tape is one of the best archival mediums. It is especially suitable for long-form recordings. Aesthetically, the medium works as a nice fetish object, which appeals to collectors and connoisseurs.”
The choice of the medium is relevant to Content because Hemant, in the album, has attempted to communicate “a sense of being encased in a permanent loop of digital media consumption.” The irony of the album’s online release, however, isn’t missable — even a criticism of digital media consumption has to be consumed via the digital media in this era.
Hemant explains the creation of Content: “The concept fell into place when our honourable Prime Minister announced at a rally in Texas (in September 2019), ‘Sab changa si’ (‘Everything is fine’). I interpreted it as ‘everyone is content’. The term ‘content’ means ‘to be satisfied’... ‘to be in a state of inertia caused by satisfaction’. In a more contemporary usage, it is used for the objects that are routinely churned out by the digital media: blog articles, books, webpages, video, audio, print pieces, social media posts… anything used as a piece of propaganda to validate the ideology of being in a state of permanent consumption.”
Hemant recorded five tracks of the album at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris last December (the other three were composed in 2018). “I encountered the most prolific harsh noise scene in the city with some superb abstract performances. It sort of willed me to record stuff which I had only tried during live performances.”
Hemant specialises in noise music, which embraces all kinds of sounds that traditional music excludes — screams, thuds, drilling sounds… you name it. As staticsignals.com describes, “(In noise music), no sound, rhythm, tone, or pitch is off limits; music can be made by anything that can vibrate air.”
He had a penchant for it since childhood. “It was fun tuning in to crackled and unclear radio stations from other countries.” Being with his ornithologist uncle, he was also fascinated with chirps of birds and insects. He learnt more about the craft of noise music while working at the Khoj Studio in Delhi (his hometown). And, understandably, he worked with other artists with a preference for his avant-garde sounds.
Asked if he’d call his work music, he replies, “It depends on who I am speaking to. For folks with a grasp of avant-garde music practices, free-jazz, theatre people, sound designers, film makers, it definitely is music since they are not expecting some harmonic or melodic to start with; they are looking for more “exciting sounds”. But with others, I claim this to be ‘abstract art’, since they have a strong notion of what music should be, which I respect.”
Hemant, however, isn’t averse to what he calls ‘traditional music’. He grew up listening to it on the radio (when he wasn’t tuning for crackled international stations). American noise rock band Lightning Bolt is an all-time favourite of his. “I still love traditional music but I prefer the live ones; I rarely listen to recordings.”
Noise music is experimental and not popular. Hemant’s works, hence, don’t reach a large audience. But he isn’t too bothered. “Yes, some people don’t have the temperament and stamina to access it. But I am focussed on those who do appreciate it. Increasingly I find more people making their own sense out of it, which is very empowering. I have always liked art which is obscure and can be appreciated without understanding it very specifically.”
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May 06, 2020 at 05:49PM
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Sound artist Hemant Sreekumar’s content is about digital era’s constant information consumption - The Hindu
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