A Measure of Anacoustic Reason | 2005
Installation with 1 projection, 4 screens, 4 dialogues, 4 lecterns, 4 benches with embedded speakers, lightbox | Exhibited at India Contemporary, Venice Biennale (2005), Thermocline of Art, Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe (2007), There has been a change of plan, Nature Morte, New Delhi (2006) 

As the world turns, so does the deaf ear of power. Watching, not listening, the marksman locates a target. Bang Bang.


A Measure of Anacoustic Reason registers our thinking about forms of reasoning that insulate themselves from listening. The word anacoustic refers to a zone in the atmosphere where air particles are too distant from each other to be able to allow for the conduction of sound. It also denotes any environment, device or condition that effectively blocks out sound. The term ‘measure’ suggests the deployment or operation of such forms of reason (as in ‘measures taken’) as well as an account or audit of the acts of reason that are realized in the form of measurements. It is, in that sense, a measure of measuring. The installation sees the act of ‘turning a deaf ear’, as the unwillingness or inability to listen to the voices that refuse to be accommodated into the master narratives of progress, of instrumental reason and the domestication of space through the geomancy of corporations and nation-states. In this turning away lies an aggressive disavowal of the possibility of the humanity of other forms of expressions and speaking about the world, that privilege realities and experiences that cannot, or need not be counted.