Saturday 11 May 2024, 7.30pm
What is the role of citizens and local communities in preserving the sound of their region? Who decided what music and sounds are ‘worth’ being archived? And how should we engage with archives as sites of both remembering and forgetting?
As part of the ERC’s Beyond 1932 Research Project at King’s College London, sound artist and composer Hardi Kurda will launch his new project, Archive Khanah. The event is part of Space21 Festival based across Slemani (Kurdistan) and its artist networks in Lebanon, Cyprus and the UK. The evening will introduce the sound archive’s interactive and community-based approach to recording and archiving forgotten and excluded voices from the 1920s - 1970s in Kurdistan and Iraq by using computer game technology to capture and perform the sounds of the region.
Supported by AFAC (Arab Fund for culture and art) and British Council Northern Ireland
Programme:
- 7.30-8.30pm: Exhibition of Archival Materials from Slemani, Kurdistan
- 8.45-9.45pm: Sonic Archiving in Kurdistan (Film ’15 + Introduction to Video Game Technology)
- 10:00-10:30pm: Live Performance of Archive and Video Game
The residency series is organised by Rim Irscheid, curator and cultural anthropologist at King’s College London. The Beyond 1932 project is funded by the EPSRC via the UKRI/EC HE Guarantee ERC scheme (funder Award Reference: EP/X022749/1).
Hardi Kurda is a sound artist, improviser, and founder of SPACE21, a sound art and experimental music platform in Slemani, and the Archive Khanah, an interactive sound archive project using the philosophy of computer gaming technology. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College, the University of London. He explores radio noises that may have been considered illegal, abandoned, unheard, invisible, broken, distorted, untold, forgotten, or simply noises from nowhere, without a place or destination. He developed the notion of "The Found Score" an instrument as a listening medium, using everyday materials to reimagine listening experiences through engaging other senses based on his listening experience in a crisis when he immigrated illegally to Europe. www.hardikurda.com
