Ba

“Chotila Anthrophony Pit” begins before arrival. It enters carrying the residue of earlier anthrophonic listenings before joining the pilgrimage at Chotila, where more than thirty thousand people move together across a thousand stone steps. Rather than documenting the climb, the piece listens for the moment a multitude begins to sound as one: when breath, footsteps, chants, waiting, negotiation, complaint, devotion, bells, and silence reorganize into a shared field of human presence. Near the end, the listening turns toward a newborn carried through the ascent before leaving with the mountain’s quiet polyphonies—silences still resonating with those who have just passed through them.

अथक (Athak)
Transdisciplinary Entries into Anthrophony

A sonic research project across mixtapes, radio works, situated listening, live transmissions, performance, zines, meditative forms, and interpersonal acoustic encounters. Athak is an ongoing transdisciplinary exploration of anthrophony- the sound of human presence- as a site of exhaustion, devotion, rupture, complaint, negotiation, care, and renewal.

The project approaches anthrophony not simply as environmental sound or human-made noise, but as a relational and bodily condition: the collective hum of proximity, friction, waiting, fatigue, ritual, and co-existence. It asks how human beings acoustically inhabit thresholds of depletion and invigoration, and what forms of listening emerge when exhaustion itself becomes shared.

One recurring site of inquiry is a Chamunda temple pilgrimage in Chotila, Saurashtra, Gujarat, where thousands of pilgrims ascend over a thousand steep steps toward the deity. The climb unfolds as an evolving sonic field: interrupted breath, chants, coughs, devotional cries, negotiations, footsteps, metallic frictions, pauses, murmurs, complaint, silence, anticipation.

Human sound accumulates as density.

Across this site, Athak listens for acoustic triggers and thresholds, moments in which bodily exhaustion reorganises into participation, attention, and renewed presence. By the time many pilgrims arrive, they appear depleted, dissociated, irritated, or physically strained. Yet, as the temple doors open and the aarti begins, a subtle but undeniable shift passes through the gathering. Breath changes tempo. Posture alters. Fatigue briefly reorganises itself into rhythm, movement, devotion, and collective attention.

Athak dwells within this unstable transition.

What does collective human exhaustion sound like before the body reorganises itself? Is invigoration innate, or does it emerge relationally, from ritual, proximity, sonic density, waiting, devotion, and the difficult labour of being with one another?

Working through field recordings, fragmented narrative, live acoustic interventions, radio dramaturgy, responsive performance, and situated listening, the project develops an evolving anatomy of sonic sites: their pacifiers, neutralisers, hums, frictions, avoidances, emotional residues, and architectures of exit. Its structure remains intentionally disoriented. Encounters interrupt one another. Memory folds into atmosphere. Breathlessness becomes rhythm; rhythm becomes form. Listening is approached not as extraction, but as relation. Rather than seeking to stabilise or control anthrophony, Athak attempts to earnestly, relentlessly remain with it, to sit beside its excesses, mistranslations, ruptures, fragile forms of reconciliation, and sonic booms.

Project Coordinator-  Virali Bukhiriya

Pratyush Pushkar / Ba is a transdisciplinary artist, poet, and researcher building a poetics of attention rooted in listening, gesture, ecological intimacy, and metaphysical longing. Working across sound, language, translation, image, food, and participatory forms, their practice traces hidden continuities between beings, atmospheres, and states of relation. Through immersive, research-led methodologies, ba constructs spaces for alternative sensing—where vulnerability, slowness, and collective attunement become ways of knowing.

Their recent work turns toward the poetics of anthrophony- the layered, often overlooked textures of collective human sound-approaching listening as a site of reconciliation, memory, and social imagination. Situated between sonic inquiry, poetic practice, and ecological attention, Ba’s works have travelled internationally across exhibitions, radio, residencies, and commissions.

www.studiobalone.com