Book chapter
Sounding Zameen
Here and Now: Artistic research in music: An Australian perspective, pp.118-131
Intelligent Arts Inc.
2016
Abstract
Zameen is a Hindi word meaning ‘land’. It is a word that has become synonymous with the damming of the Narmada River in North India. To date over 30 million people have been internally displaced, and the resulting Indigenous activist movement – the Narmada Bachao Andolan – has become one of the most successful and sophisticated in contemporary history. Within The DAM(N) Project, Zameen is an immersive performance drawing on environmental field recordings, triptych visuals and contemporary dance that pulls the audience into the heart of a remote Indian community fighting for their way of life. The work was developed in Queensland and premiered at the Encounters India Festival in May 2013 and has since toured internationally. This chapter documents the creative development of the DAM(N) Project with a specific focus on sound and acoustic ecology. The DAM(N) Project began in 2011 when a group of artists from Australia and India journeyed deep into India’s Narmada Valley. We met and lived with communities that are gradually being submerged due to large-scale dam development and began a series of creative projects to tell their stories. The DAM(N) project is focused on community capacity building and the creation of multi-platform creative content that can be disseminated internationally. It was conceived and developed in collaboration with Jehan Kanga, a Sydney-based producer, and S. Shakthidharan, the director of CuriousWorks, a cultural enterprise that grew out of a desire to give those in marginalised communities an opportunity to tell their stories. Zameen is our first collaboration together and draws on material collected from our initial journey in North India.
Details
- Title
- Sounding Zameen
- Authors
- Leah Barclay (Author) - Griffith University
- Contributors
- Vanessa Tomlinson (Editor) - Griffith UniversityToby Wren (Editor) - Griffith University
- Publication details
- Here and Now: Artistic research in music: An Australian perspective, pp.118-131
- Publisher
- Intelligent Arts Inc.
- ISBN
- 9780988889699
- Organisation Unit
- Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Business and Creative Industries; School of Creative Industries - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99472006002621
- Output Type
- Book chapter
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