DRAF Studio: A performance by Haroon Mirza
at DRAF, Camden
Artist Haroon Mirza presents a live performance for DRAF Studio. Mirza and his studio hrm199 have been based on site at DRAF over the last year, sharing space and conversation. The event is part of DRAF’s Spring 2017 season looking at the intersections between music, sound and art, which includes performances by artist duo Emptyset (Paul Purgas and James Ginzburg) and Swedish musician Jay-Jay Johanson.
DRAF Studio is supported by Arts Council England and DRAF Galleries Circle.
Emerging Paradigm is a device designed and developed by hrm199. The device is a multi-media player that allows users to synchronise up to four videos and twenty-four channels of electrical signal. The electrical signal can be used to generate light and sound simultaneously using binary processes and/or interface other electronic equipment.
This first piece made for the multi-media device, also titled Emerging Paradigm, 2015, presents a combination of iPhone and YouTube footage collated over a three-year period. The content is a combination of mundane everyday observations, scientific and pseudo-scientific educational videos and documentation of works by artists and musicians. The material reflects Mirza’s ongoing interests in shamanism, psychedelics, quantum theories, astro-physics, fundamentalism and epistemology. It also features footage from artist Nik Void of Factory Floor. The videos interact with eight channels of live electricity, which can be heard through an array of speakers and seen through strips of LEDs. The work conjures a sense of intense media overload and multi-sensory and synesthetic stimuli.
The name Emerging Paradigm refers to a theoretical understanding of the current conditions that shadow artistic practice. Based on Nathalie Heinich’s idea of modern and contemporary paradigms, which was later elaborated by Mario Perniola to provide lenses through which to understand art, the emerging paradigm extends that vocabulary to denote a culture of commodifying that which is not yet fully formed.
