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[hoque]

DOCUMENTA14.

SAVVY Funk / Saout Radio with Openvizor Sound System was playing presenting Portrait of Baul project yesterday at DOCUMENTA14

[enamul]

PORTRAIT OF BAUL by Enamul Hoque at The Barbican

This time last year we presented...

Portrait of Baul by Enamul Hoque

As many of you will know, I was invited to take part in INTERFACES Processing reality through art and technology. a group show at The Barbican.

This gave us an opportunity for the first-ever public presentation of Portrait of Baul project.

The Portrait of Baul installation at the Barbican combined large-scale site specific video projection in 21k from three wirelessly synched 21K projectors in portrait and 3 channel audio were staggering with the structural forms of the arts centre on a grand scale.

Portrait of Baul project transformed the column in the foyer into a glowing pilar of light and sound: “the ‘Baul’s emerged from the concrete surface to sing, before disolving once again into the architecture of the Barbican”.

The presentation, a triptych of video of the traveling Baul's of Bengal gave us the oppertunity to use our new home grown “EPSeed” Media server system.

Visitors encountered the Baul as they traversed The Barbican centre catching glipses of their performances from walkways and stairs.

Background to PORTRAIT OF BAUL project: For over ten years I’ve felt compelled to explore and record Lalon songs / Baul performances to make sure this tradition / philosophy of Fakir Lalon Shah does not fade away but remains accessible to enrich future generations.

Just three of these songs formed the basis of Portrait of Baul installation at The Barbican representing male / female & disabled Baul.

Fakir Lalon Shah, was a Bengali Baul saint, mystic, songwriter, social reformer and thinker.(1772 – 17 October 1890 )

The Baul are a spiritual sect of travelling minstrels who wander through Bengal from village to village, performing songs in exchange for hospitality or a small rewards.

Despite the transient nature of Baul performances, the extraordinary qualities of their music and Lalon's lyrics leave lasting memories with those who hear them – so much so that people of Bengali origins now living far away find them strongly evocative of ‘home’ where once they were inextricably part of the fabric of life.

The cultural scholar of Bangladesh, Dr. Anwarul Karim, asserts – in discussing the Baul tradition, that ‘Art is a part of life, and cannot be separated from it’.

This presentation in the Barbican took place August 2015.

CREDITS: Enamul Hoque - Artist Matt Moate - Creative Director Abbas Nokhasteh - Producer Event Projection

Funded by Openvizor

Work, developments with all our collabrators around Portrait of Baul Project continues...

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Aesthetically Rewarding  - The spirituality and ascetic drive towards ultimate ecstasy, the self-critical search for the ‘Man of he heart’, find their best expression, for the Baul, in poetry and music – transient forms, where the experience and memory of it are all that may endure. Of all aesthetic rewards, these are by far the most widely available and, many argue, the most inspiring and influential.

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