FICA and Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council invite you to a work-in-progress presentation by sound artist Gilles Aubry

Date:  Thursday, 28 February 2013
Time: 5:30 pm
Venue: FICA Reading Room, D-42 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024

Gilles Aubry is a sound artist currently part of the Pro Helvetia India residency programme. He will present his research in progress about the 'Bollywood soundscape' in Mumbai. Over six weeks in early 2013 he has recorded people at work in the film/TV industry, including music and dance studios, acting schools, shootings, auditions, dress manufacturers and theaters among others, documenting at the same time the soundscape of the neighbourhoods where these activities were taking place.

While the aesthetics and politics of Bollywood images may have been often described as products of an increasingly globalized and normalized entertainment industry, Aubry's recordings display an astonishing complexity, possibly covering many aspects of the contemporary Indian society.

Along with excerpts of the soundtrack of Pasolini's 1969 film essay “Notes towards a film about India”, Aubry will discuss the very idea of using film-making as a way to question society. 

About The Artist:

Gilles Aubry is a Swiss sound artist living in Berlin since 2002. Trained initially as a sax player and composer, he graduated in 2010 as a Master student in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts (UDK) in Berlin. His artistic practice is based on an auditory approach of the real informed by researches on cultural and historical aspects of sound production and reception. Combining ethnography, critical discourse and formal experiments, Aubry's work fits in the field of documentary art. His sonic images (phonographies) of more or less identified situations stand as an attempt to challenge problematic aspects of visual representations.
www.soundimplant.com/gilaubry

Image courtesy: Gilles Aubry, still from Hi-Fi Borders, Audio installation, 2010.