Le Guess Who? has always worked with a borderless and boundary-crossing ethos. It led the organization to create COSMOS: a hybrid (both online and offline) platform that promotes international collaboration. Via this platform, organizations and initiatives from around the world give an insight into their local cultural scenes through film.
Now, COSMOS expands its scope and organizes its first international, two-week residency. It is a next step for COSMOS in connecting people, entities and organizations that share common values and ideas to create more sustainable and immersive collaborations.
Hardi Kurda (Kurdistan-Iraq) is a composer, sound artist, improviser, researcher, and curator, and is also the founder of Space21. He is invited by curator, economist, writer, and filmmaker Rana Ghose for an art residency in Goa, India. Hardi’s work and performances involve suggestive, unusual sounds, unexpected moments and noise. Among other mediums, Hardi uses radio to explore spectrum frequency as sound material and interact with the audience.
Le Guess Who? previously collaborated with Hardi Kurda and Rana Ghose for the November 2022 edition of COSMOS. Both artists created films about their local cultural scenes through the organizations of Space21 (Kurdistan-Iraq) and REProduce (Goa, India).
Location and theme
Over two weeks, beginning April 26th, Hardi Kurda will be an artist in residence at 999, a new studio and gallery space curated by Julien Segard and Tenzing Dakpa, located in Carona, Goa. 999 will form the workspace where Hardi will explore his toolkits, such as stringed instruments, adulterated radio transmissions and paper media cutouts in collaboration with local artists such as producer, sound artist and bass player Krishna Jhaveri; DJ / producer Madhav Shorey; multi-disciplinary artist Varoon Nair; and photographer Naihan Nath.
Hardi Kurda’s artistic work is often a reflection on his illegal journey to Europe, and a questioning of the construction of legality. The residency in Goa will be a further exploration of the experience of migrants. Goa has been imbued with a sort of gravity that has pulled creatives from across India to live, experiment, and incubate. United by an independent creative ambition outside the realm of more mainstream pop culture, the region is a fertile ground for creativity. It is the perfect arena to expose someone unsure or unaware of this context to foster a creative episode.
At the end of his residency, Hardi Kurda’s work will be showcased as part of an event produced by REProduce, who will also document his residency on film. This film will showcase both the process of the work as well as a series of conversations with the artist, and will be shown during Le Guess Who? 2023.
Photography by Rana Ghose
Video by Rana Ghose, Neelansh Mittra and Nithin Shamsudhin
Music by REVANT
