EVENT SERIES: Poulomi Desai & Anat Ben-David

2 DEC, 7pm
PACE Studio 1
Richmond Street
De Montfort University

Leicester
LE2 7BQ

Entry Free
http://mtirc-news.blogspot.co.uk/2015/

Poulomi Desai is best known for her large-scale sound and photography installations that interrogate the politics of identity, listening and perception. Inspired by her post-punk theatre background, her tools are image-based, textual, performative and acoustic, traversing boundaries of physical location and structures of presentation. Her current pre-occupation investigates sacrilegious sound and vision through the machinations of her prepared, modified sitar, electronics, sirens, VLF and radio soundscapes, and slide projections, performing on the noise and free improviser scenes.

Recent performances and installations include, Fort Process, Clandestino, Colour Out Space, Supernormal festivals and appearances at Cafe Oto. Commissions and exhibitions include, The Serpentine Gallery, The Photographers Gallery, The Science Museum, INIVA, The Queens Museum (USA), The Oxford Gallery (India), Futuresonic UK and Souzouzukan 9001 Japan. Her work has been published in four books, Red Threads, Different, Terrorist Assemblages and Out of Place. She runs Usurp Art, an experimental tactical media artist-led space where she has curated over 100 exhibitions and events. “Her irreverent aim is to shatter the contours of these fixed notions of sexual, national, cultural, personal, political and diasporic identities” – Professor Stuart Hall Different Pub.Phaidon.

Poulomi Desai will be joined by Dushume.
www.poulomidesai.tumblr.com | www.usurp.org.uk | www.youtube.com/usurps

Anat Ben-David is a London based artist and composer. Her primary interest lies in the relationship between different elements occurring in an event where text, sound and digital image are mediated through improvisation and performance. She has recently completed a PhD at Kingston University researching how an artwork that includes different mediums and different systems within it can be underpinned by foundational concepts for the work to be considered a coherent whole – the OpeRaArt. Anat’s OpEraArt exists as a multiple visual and sonic expressions presented as gallery video and photographic installation, as well as a live performance comprising of songs and sound pieces assembled into a music album.

Since 2003, she has been a member of the group Chicks On Speed and has also been a member of Art Rules Crew. She has produced many solo works and albums and has had exhibitions and performances at many leading international venues and galleries including: Tate Britain, ICA, London, MoMA New York, Migros Museum, Zurich and the Pompidou Centre, Paris.

“Anat is a wonderful performer… part Laibach, a dash of Einsturzende Neubauten, add a touch of Marlene Dietrich and Doris Day, marinate it in a freezer with Busby Berkeley, Pina Bausch and Valie Export, et voila! That’s what the image of her shows at that time… it’s accurate, believe me. As for me trying to squeeze my tiny ego into a portrait by Rankin, well, the results speak for themselves. If in any doubt, please call 999 and ask for the fire service.” Douglass Gordon  (Destroy Rankin project for youth music 2009)

Anat will perform the piece The Unexpected Whiz for large group featuring Dirty Electronics.
www.yippieyeah.co.uk/anat