Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
“Sonic Psychogeographies II“
TX: Tuesday, 15th April – 6:00 – 6.30pm / Thursday, 17th April – 12:00 – 12:30pm BST
This radio work takes a critical position against cartography and departs from its connections to colonial practices of mapmaking and imperial borders. Drawing insights from alternative spatial practices of meandering in some of the Global Souths regions and cultures, and from radical-subversive practices in Europe, such as The Situationists, in this work I explore some listening-driven counter mapping practices, attuning by migratory movement and drifting. Within this discursive context, I present my artistic method of nomadic listening and sonic psychogeography, manifest in this work, which investigates the sonic fabric and distortions of the German city Offenbach, a poorer post-industrial urban terrain during a residency. The sound archaeology lends an ear to underheard corners in public spaces, exposing historical and social layers as acoustic material. Incorporating radio interferences and field recording traces, I try to demonstrate how an unfolding auditory situation holds acts of listening open, instead of closing it down in the form of a soundscape. Here I take liberty to critique Murray Schafer’s soundscaping and acoustic design approach, as for a listening-based artist, it is crucial to perform acts of adaptive perception in intersubjective listening, attunement, and to trace these situations for sharing in the form of drifting and shifting personal narratives.
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer. Chattopadhyay produces works for exhibition, installation and live performance addressing contemporary issues of environment and ecology, migration, and decoloniality. His works have been widely exhibited, performed, or presented across the globe. Chattopadhyay has an expansive body of scholarly publications in media arts history, artistic research, media theory and aesthetics in leading peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of five books, including The Nomadic Listener (2020), The Auditory Setting (2021), Between the Headphones (2021), and Sound Practices in the Global South (2022). Chattopadhyay holds a PhD in Artistic Research and Sound Studies from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), Basel, Switzerland, and a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway.