Why Chelsea Leventhal chronicles a city’s soundscapes

Chelsea Leventhal, one of the artistes at Goethe Institut’s bangaloREsidency 2024 talks about the piece she is exhibiting in Bengaluru

The bangaloREsidency that is currently underway at Goethe Institut promotes cross-cultural collaboration and this year’s edition has 10 artists from Germany exploring different facets of Bengaluru as a city to create works of art that will evoke thought.

As part of this program, the artists who work in different disciplines, are engaging with various organisations in Bengaluru to create works that highlight the city’s identity.

Originally from the United States, Chelsea Leventhal is a sound installation artiste now based in Berlin, Germany. “For the course of this residency, we are all a part of a partner institution which allows us to simultaneously be in this group of 10 artistes, and at the same time, have our own specific line of work. It has been an interesting and unique experience,” says Chelsea whose partner institution is maraa, a media and arts collective.

Chelsea says her project, titled The Hands, Amplified — The Voices, Responding, involves the sounds produced by physical labour in Bengaluru. “For the most part, we’ve concentrated our work in one part of Koramangala, looking at different occupations and that entails the use of tools and machines, as well as physical exertion.”

“The recordings that I’m working with are of people carrying out tasks related to metal work. There’s a blacksmith, and the sounds one hears at a dhobi ghat where clothes are being washed and at a sewing workshop.”

If you are wondering how does one showcase sounds as part of an art exhibit, Chelsea says, “The project may take on different forms in the future, but I’ll be presenting a sound installation using multiple speakers at the Cubbon Park Metro Station at Art In Transit, a blocked off subway exit. The sounds will be played in a long tunnel, essentially allowing the visitors to step into these various soundscapes.”

“In addition to that, I have commissioned four young artistes from the Koramangala slum cluster, who grew up there to respond with prose and poetry to these recordings. They will be looking into their own memories and associations, concerns, or even pride related to these sounds,” she adds.

The young artistes — Robinson, Sathyarani, Sanghamithra and Suryajohn — are members of Big Bang by Maarga, a community-led organisation in Koramangala that trains disadvantaged youth in performing arts. “That connection was made through my host and I’m very grateful for it, because these artistes have an interesting perspective of Bangalore, as a city caught between tradition and innovation, a city where sound is a big topic,” she says.

“What sounds are given priority and which ones get shut out? Which sounds are in danger of going extinct or are endangered? The idea was to have the young people respond to these sounds creatively.”

Elaborating on the nature of her work, Chelsea says, “I am interested in sound as a social phenomenon as it is imbued with a lot of emotion. I look at how people find a sense of home in a city, especially one like Bangalore; the role sound plays in this is often underestimated. It is a complicated topic and that has made this project an important one for me.”

Bengaluru may not be the only city with a cacophony of its own, but Chelsea says the city’s drastic change over the last few years, made it an interesting choice to examine critically. “Sounds such as traffic and construction seem to have unlimited priority while sounds of craftsmanship and physical labour are endangered due to the precarity of the lives of people involved.”

Chelsea who has been working with this media for the past 10 years, has a background in electro acoustic composition, and, “is interested in the social relation to sound and in presenting pieces outside of a concert hall. So most of my work is in the form of installations and combined with visual elements.”

The Hands, Amplified — The Voices, Responding by Chelsea Leventhal will be on display at Cubbon Park Metro Station on November 24 from 3pm-6pm, alongside Living in Liminality, a work by Firat Yildiz, another bangaloREsident and electronic music artiste.

Published - November 23, 2024 11:37 am IST