Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu
Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu
Haroon Mirza has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. He devises sculptures, performances and immersive installations that pry on ones awareness of their own experience. An advocate of interference (in the sense of electro-acoustic or radio disruption), he creates situations that purposefully cross wires. He describes his role as a composer, manipulating his primary medium, electricity, a live, invisible and volatile natural phenomenon combined with a varied plethora of material such as household objects, turntables and musical instruments, LEDs, furniture, video footage and existing artworks by other artists to behave differently. Processes are left exposed and sounds occupy space in an unruly way, testing codes of conduct and charging the atmosphere. Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms. “All music is organised sound or organised noise,” he says citing Edgar Varèse. “So as long as you’re organising acoustic material, it’s just the perception and the context that defines it as music or noise or sound or just a nuisance” (2013).
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