Sudden Beams 3: Asian Futurism is a programme of presentations that dives into the cutting edge ways artists are harnessing digital technology — like AI, video games, and virtual museums — to reimagine and reshape Asian heritage. See how these innovations are breathing new life into cultural traditions and crafting bold, visionary perspectives on Asia’s past and future.
Programme highlights include exploring Elsewhere in India’s latest project, Antara, which features an Indo-futuristic museum within a video game. And a captivating sonic archive project by Memeshift that merges traditional sounds with contemporary electronic music. We will also hear how artists and art spaces can use creative technology to better represent marginalised narratives from across Asia.
This is an excellent opportunity to meet and hear from artists and professionals from art, technology, and gaming worlds.
Date: Sunday, 27 October 2024
Time: 1pm doors and bar, 1:30-4:30pm programme
Address: The Old Market, 11A Upper Market St, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, Hove BN3 1AS
Click here to get your tickets now: https://theoldmarket.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173656240
Curated and produced by Platform Asia, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney and Dreamy Place. Supported by Art Fund, Arts Council England, Creative Australia, Diversity Art Forum, People’s Postcode Trust and The Chalk Cliff Trust. Special thanks to arebyte Gallery and Chinabot.
Sudden Beams is a platform that supports and promotes South Asian artists working with sound and digital media in the UK and internationally.
Sudden Beams 3: Asian Futurism is the closing event of the 2024 Dreamy Place Festival in Brighton.
Speakers:
Elsewhere in India (Artists: Murthovic and Thiruda)
Amrita Dhallu (Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate)
Kinnari Saraiya (Curator, Somerset House & Guest Curator, arebyte Gallery)
Morgan Sully, aka Memeshift (Artist, Musician & Curator, Latent Sonorities)
Gary Zhexi Zhang (Artist)
Chair & Moderator:
Michelle Rocha (Head of Touring, Factory International)
Schedule
13:00 – Doors and Bar Open
13:30 – Welcome & Introduction
13:45 – Gary Zhexi Zhang
14:15 – Elsewhere in India & Kinnari Saraiya
14:45 – Interval
15:00 – Morgan Sully, aka Memeshift
15:35 – Amrita Dhallu
16:05 – Panel & Q&A, led by Michelle Rocha
16:30 – Event Close & Bar Open
Additional Information:
Due to limited seating at the venue, please pre-book your tickets to ensure a seat.Please arrive at 13:00 to collect tickets and secure a seat.
Access tickets are available. Please contact our staff if you require additional support with access.
Bios of speakers and contributors:
Elsewhere in India (Murthovic and Thiruda)
Elsewhere in India is a groundbreaking transmedia project founded by artists Sri Rama Murthy (Murthovic) and Avinash Kumar (Thiruda). The project explores the intersection of Indian cultural heritage, speculative fiction, and emerging technologies. Through immersive and thought-provoking installations, performances, and experiences, it invites audiences on a journey through time, space, and consciousness, navigating fragments of a future India on the brink of cultural amnesia.
Murthovic and Thiruda have been pivotal in shaping Indian electronic music and new media art since the early 2000s. Their collaborative projects seamlessly integrate elements of ancient Indian mythology, classical art forms, and cutting-edge digital technologies, creating powerful narratives that resonate deeply emotionally. With their unique artistic language, they transcend cultural boundaries, inspiring a new generation of Indian artists and redefining the possibilities of immersive storytelling in the digital age.
Amrita Dhallu
Amrita Dhallu is a curator and researcher based in London, dedicated to supporting emerging British artists through commissioning, editorial projects, and creating artistic networks and intergenerational learning spaces. Her research focuses on ‘care’, spatial politics, and ethno-futurist discourse within exhibition-making. Amrita is Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, where she co-curated Lubaina Himid’s monographic exhibition in 2021.
Kinnari Saraiya
Kinnari Saraiya is a wordbuilder, artist, curator, and writer – primarily a storyteller. She works across film, interactive 3D digital immersive environments, installation, animation, sculpture, folk dance, and sound, weaving complex sensorial narratives together. Her work blends ancestral memories with colonial realities to create a third space that is virtual, transnational, and diasporic. Thriving in gaps of knowledge and mistranslations, she forces the collision of pre-humanist thought and post-humanist desire. Saraiya has won several awards since graduating in 2020 and has exhibited in over 20 exhibitions nationally and internationally, most notably at the Kyiv Biennial 2021 Allied, curated by the East Europe Biennial Alliance.
Kinnari is the curator at Somerset House and an alumnus of the Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellowship. She is also the guest curator for Fragments of a Panorama, a solo exhibition by Elsewhere in India currently on display at the arebyte Gallery.
Morgan Sully
Morgan Sully is an organiser and experimental electronic musician who draws creative strength from his cultural heritage and the vast diasporas of his fellow kin.
Together with Bilawa Ade Respati, Rabih Beaini, and Khyam Allami, he developed an open-source sample pack of Javanese gamelan instruments called Latent Sonorities. This project includes MIDI tunings, guides, and tools for artists exploring Southeast Asian tonality. The project, created in collaboration with Rumah Budaya Indonesia – Berlin (RBI) and Morphine Raum, was co-released with live album recordings on his label L-KW and Yogyakarta’s Yes No Wave and is freely available for artists and researchers. It will soon be inaugurated as a public resource in RBI’s library collection.
Morgan’s debut album, Echoes, was released on Chinabot in April 2024.
Gary Zhexi Zhang
Gary Zhexi Zhang’s work explores systemic connections between cosmology, technology, and economy. He operates individually, collaboratively, and within organisational frameworks. His recent work includes editing Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, 2023), a book of fiction, essays, and interviews on finance and time. Dead Cat Bounce, an opera he co-created with Waste Paper Opera, premiered at Somerset House in 2022 and is touring in 2024. His latest solo exhibition, METAMERS, was presented at EPFL Pavilions in February 2024.
Gary has lectured in Critical Studies at Goldsmiths MFA, been a PhD external examiner at RCA, and served as an Adjunct Lecturer at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he co-founded the design studio Foreign Objects. In 2023, he was an R&D fellow at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, and artist-in-residence at EPFL, Lausanne. His writing has appeared in Frieze, ArtReview, Verge Journal of Global Asias, Journal of Cultural Economy, and MIT Journal of Design and Science. His recent and forthcoming books include Against Reduction (chapter, MIT Press, 2021), Incomputable Earth (chapter, Bloomsbury, forthcoming), Platforms: Around, In Between and Through (Singapore Biennale, 2023); Future Art Ecosystems III & IV (co-author; Serpentine, 2022 & 2024).
Michelle Rocha
Michelle Rocha is Head of Touring at Factory International, where she is responsible for bringing original new works co-commissioned by Factory International to global audiences. She is also a board member of Quarantine, a theatre company. Previously, she was Producer at West Kowloon Cultural District (HK), overseeing music and outdoor productions. Michelle has worked at the Wales Millennium Centre (UK) for the 2012 Olympics, the Hong Kong Dance Company, Lushington/Live Nation, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival. She is a Clore Fellow.
All artists