Something & Nothing, And The Work Of Haroon Mirza

West Leicester, 31 December 2018

This post is primarily about three categories of subject.  Firstly, it's about frames - both geometric and referential; secondly, it's concerned with what's not there - within the frames, and otherwise; and thirdly, it involves connections - between the first two categories, between ideas generally, and in functional circuitry.  Ultimately, it's probably about what might be found - just as it seems that other things have been lost.

It begins with two photos - taken in fading light on the last day of the old year.  Both images display the kind of spare urban geometry that always draws my camera.  Indeed, both represent the kind of imagery that informed my 'Vestige', and 'Change Of Use' series, back in 2006.  In each case, the subjects feel delicious in their mundane inconsequentiality, implied entropy, and bleak framing of - pretty much nothing.  When I first started to collect such motifs, my idea was that they spoke of something that had once been, or communicated - and which was now departed, forgotten, or silenced.  This time round - on a drab afternoon, on the cusp of 2019, and in a nation seemingly beset by nihilism - it was equally possible to imagine there might have been nothing of value left to miss in the first place.

In the light of the third category outlined above, it now seems like both images (and the second in particular) might be interpreted as primitively rendered circuit diagrams.  To the communication or transmission of exactly what they might be dedicated, however - one might only guess.

West Leicester, 31 December 2018

The rest of the images here were collected a few days later, at Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, whilst visiting Haroon Mirza's current exhibition, 'Reality Is Somehow What We Expect It To Be', with my friends Andrew and Tim.  Mirza's show is one of those I entered with  expectations already somewhat 'managed' by at least one slightly ambivalent review.  In such situations it is, of course, important to keep an open mind, and I was pleased to find various pieces (and the exhibition as a whole) increasingly resonating with me - the longer I spent with them.  Resonating is an apposite term too, as Mirza's mixed-media, audio-visual work is as much (if not more) about sound, as it is about what is seen.

Haroon Mirza, 'LED Circuit Compositions', Found Materials & LEDs, 2015-16

Most of the work on display features powerful noise elements, be they of the found variety, or in the form of powerful abstract frequencies.  However, the pieces which initially captivated me - from his 'LED Circuit Composition' series,  were actually amongst the most silent.  This collection of illuminated assemblages, initially drew me in with their spare, geometry - perhaps predictably enough.  Certainly, with those first two New Year's Eve images still very fresh in my mind - there was a comforting recognition of something familiar, in formal terms, at least.  I quickly realised that it was also because, in an admittedly more sensuous way - they also have as much to do with what isn't there, as what is.

Haroon Mirza, (L.): 'LED Circuit Composition 12', 2015, (R.): 'GMT (LED Circuit Composition 24)', 2016,
Both: Turntable Components & LEDs.

In fact, what materiality they do exhibit, is largely to do with framing of open or transparent spaces - through which the insubstantial effects of their coloured light might be observed on the wall behind.  As the series title indicates - the main point of those physical elements is to carry the circuit which enables the illumination.  One result, for me, was that what might have initially resembled a slightly 'thin' collaging of inconsequential found materials, came to embody a distinctly contemporary variety of poetic, immaterial spectacle.

Haroon Mirza, 'Serpent/DNA (LED Circuit Composition 26)', Various Found Materials
& LEDs, 2018

Superficially, Mirza's slightly ramshackle deployment of found or junk elements might be seen as partially belonging to the tradition of Rauschenberg, Johns, et al - forebears who were essentially about piling up the consumer debris of the twentieth century (in a densely substantial way) to release their theoretical or philosophical associations.  However, Mirza's readymade assemblages also speak eloquently of how the products and materials with which we now surround ourselves, seem to be ever more flimsy, lightweight, or even virtual.  Thin, sheet-metal pressings replace heavier ironmongery; moulded perspex draws slender lines in its own transparency via nothing more than edge perception; traditional, oil or wax-borne pigments are replaced by industrial coatings; and brushed aluminium display board edging becomes as likely a framing device as a wooden window frame.

Perhaps most apposite to contemporary experience - these pieces can seem to reach for no actual meaning necessarily more specific than their own display.  Admittedly, the subtitles Mirza appends to certain of the 'LED Circuit Compositions' suggest clues to possible associations but without the necessary due dilligence, we are mostly offered a kind of glowing vacancy - which we're invited to fill-in for ourselves.

Haroon Mirza, 'Hibernal Solstice (LED Circuit Composition 27)', Various Found Materials
& LEDs, 2018

In general terms, and certainly as I spent longer with the work - I came to realise that this apparent absence of any simplistic message was a strength, far more than a weakness.  A symbolic, or otherwise 'meaningful' repurposing of the 'found' are all thoroughly established within contemporary art, and we are perhaps far enough up the post-Duchampian, Conceptual road to have become a bit mentally lazy when presented with the familiar tropes of bricolage or the Readymade in a gallery.  The temptation nowadays is to move straight past the tension of bafflement, and crack straight on with solving the 'puzzle' presented by a particular work or installation - using whatever toolkit of familiar background theory we may possess.

I write here, of course, as someone benefitting from a modicum or elitist/specialist education, and a little familiarity with some of the philosophical and theoretical frameworks surrounding contemporary art (even if, actually - in a rather 'middle-brow' fashion).  But we can't un-know what we know.  Nevertheless, reflecting on Haroon Mirzas's work reminds me that this habitual rush to decipher; the need to 'understand' on an intellectual level - can often rob an artwork of its full resonance (that word again), on a more experiential level. 

Haroon Mirza, 'A Chamber For Horwitz: Sonakinatography Transcriptions In Surround Sound',
Custom A/V Device, LEDs, Speakers, Foam, 2015

And so, it occurs to me that, whilst Mirza's oeuvre is certainly not without its possible cultural or sociological associations - they as likely to be a by-product of his rudimentary circuitry and cheerful hacking of consumer electronics, as they are an important point that must be put across.  Because, ultimately, I think that all his improvisatory, slightly post-apocalyptic wiring-up of connections between disparate discards - is to find out how the resulting frequencies of sound and light might stimulate the senses, as much as (or at least, before) the intellect.  The real agenda may actually be an attempt to hold the two sides in a kind of non-conclusive balance.

Osman Yousefzada (Video) / Haroon Mirza (Sound), 'Welcome To The Machine',
Video, Photovoltaic Panel, Arduino, Headphones, Mixer, 2018  

I found that the order in which I reacted to each piece was generally: 1. An immediate reaction to the particular buzz, hiss, or quality of illumination being emitted.  2. Some, vaguely nerdish attempt to explain the (often crude) manner in which such effects were generated.  This involves the following of cables, identification of contact mics, photo-voltaic cells, etc., or the pressing of ears to speakers - in a general quest to discover exactly what is triggering what.  And that is important, because only then is it followed by... 3. An attempt to interpret meaning on an conceptual/theoretical level.  And with that, comes the realisation that the specific imagery on a video screen, or bound up within some found object, is as likely to have been suggested by items 1 and 2, as it is to have brought them into being.  And that, in turn, seems even more relevant, once one realises that much of that material may even have been appropriated from, or input by, another artist altogether.

Thus, in a simple piece like 'After The Big Bang' , in which a silent, looped video of a waterfall plays next to a Mashall amp, hissing with static in a thoroughly convincing simulacrum of cascading water  - we're left to wonder which element suggested the other.  It constitutes eloquent little comment on the nature of sensory illusion, and the way that we might be fooled into making completely synthetic associations.  From there, it's completely up to you/me to decide whether it might also refer to the possible correspondence between the flow of different currents, or even the residual tinnitus provoked by over-amplified Rock music.

Haroon Mirza, 'Tika Tak', Various Found Elements, Audio System, LEDs, Video, 2008

More complex, and perhaps more ambiguous still, is 'Taka Tak', which features a video of a contemporary Pakistani street food vendor preparing his ingredients as a kind of ritual performance.  This is connected to an old cabinet speaker, surmounted by a record deck - itself bearing a transistor radio and a small Sufi statuette.  Between lies a Qu'ran stand, containing red LEDs, which I couldn't help sensing as a source of heat (they aren't).  Whilst there is clearly some thematic reference to Islamic culture here, it's hard to really perceive much other than the increasingly hypnotic footage of food preparation, for minutes on end - complete with circular motions and the metallic scrapings of the chef's spatulas.  At one point, I experienced a strange nasal hallucination of cooking meat - which may have simply wafted from the Ikon's cafeteria, but somehow felt integral to the work.  Only once one has given up on much else happening, does the audio suddenly split - sending a crescendo of oscillating sound, to the transistor - spins aboard the record deck with an improvised Leslie effect.  Subsequent research reveals that Sufism contains the Dervish sect - themselves, of course, famed for their whirling ritual dance.

And so, what might at first appear just another video-augmented bric-a-brac assemblage, suddenly unifies itself into an elegantly allusive riff on the tensions between the contemporary and the traditional; the corporeal and the spiritual; and perhaps between ritual - as an integral element of Eastern experience - and a dilettante activity in the West (in the form of DJ/Dance Music culture).  All of that is neatly linked by the theme of circular motion and repetitive rhythm, but most importantly - it is unlocked primarily through sensory experience.

Haroon Mirza, 'Open Source / Copyright (Rules Of Appropriation 5)', Magnet, Levitation
Device, Vinyl, Fake Designer Purse, Photovoltaic Panels, Mirror, Metal Legs, 2018 

That spinning motion is actually something which recurs through Haroon Mirza's work, and so - I'm led full circle, and to the following realisation. Just as one might feel there's nothing  much there, or that a search for pat meaning has foundered amidst carelessly compiled junk (and maybe, that's actually enough) - do possible interpretations start to multiply in a far more organic manner.  Nothing (or not very much) might really be something, after all.

Perhaps this post is really just about free-association... 


Haroon Mirza, 'Reality Is Somehow What We Expect It To Be'  Continues Until 24 February 2019, At: Ikon Gallery, Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HS    

Janek Schaefer: 'Asleep At The Wheel'

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Windscreen View

It is of course, both a blessing and a curse of the Digital Age, that no single piece of information can any longer remain discrete or hermetically disconnected.  Each new item of interest is linked to a million others, and thus, our attention is quickly overwhelmed and shattered exponentially as we jump from link to link and topic to topic.  Never mind Ebola, information is the virus that will finally consume us all, I suspect.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', IF Milton Keynes International Festival,  2010

Thus it is that, whilst writing a supposedly brief synopsis of Janek Schaefer’s Sound Art piece, ‘Lay-By Lullaby’, (as a tangent to my own current artistic activities) [1.], I found myself also considering his far more ambitious, but clearly related, multi-media installation, ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ [2.].  All of that takes place in the context of several other half-written blog posts, all nested within one another in different ways.  There are just as many others laying around on my hard drive that just never made the cut, (so far).

Exterior View Of Venue For Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Milton Keynes, 2010

Yet, I want to consider ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ further  here, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, because it appears, in itself, to have been a huge, multi-dimensional example of this viral quality of information and knowledge.  It was presented, at first glance, as a kind of immersive Ballardian riff on the thrillingly alienating effects of modern car culture, (as indeed is ‘Lay-By Lullaby’).  The venue, - a disused Sainsbury's supermarket, is a distinctly Ballard-like location and I'm struck by how images of the event capture a similar feel to David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Ballard's novel 'Crash' [4.].  However, further research quickly reveals a far more complex and politically engaged agenda, taking in environmentalism, geo-politics, economics. philosophy, sociology and, pretty much, the prospects for all life on the planet.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', IF Milton Keynes International Festival, 2014

Anyone visiting the installation, (which I didn’t), and spending just a little time absorbing some of the audio information piped into Schaefer’s ten assembled cars or available within the Library and Service Areas, would have left feeling they’d taken on enough mental cargo to last for years.  In fact, considering the existential, ‘big issues’ nature of it all, a lifetime would be nearer the mark.  There's food for thought here on a global scale, and critiques of so much of the way our society and economy are structured.  There are also suggestions about how change might be affected on a personal or local level, including the 10:10 campaign to cut carbon emissions.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Library Area

Having just downloaded and ploughed through the associated sound files [5.] from Schaeffer’s online archive, I can honestly say I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed myself.  And yet, I would recommend doing the same.  The sound element weaves together numerous sound sources, voices, addresses and radio broadcasts with Schaefer's own musical ambiences into a vast soup of information and ideas.  The general message of the unsustainability of modern industrial/consumer Capitalism, our dependence on rapidly squandered, finite reserves of fossil fuels, and the threat to both the planet’s survival, is hardly new, but becoming ever more urgent as the days go by.  Indeed, it can all seem so intimidating and all encompassing that the individual is left feeling impotent or apathetic.  Nevertheless, Schaefer has to be admired for his ambition and scope, and for presenting so much interrelated stuff in a sensually seductive and thought provoking manner.  It’s also worth noting how well he connects the issues with various insights into human motivations, and that he’s careful to include as many voices of optimism and advocates of constructive change, as he does prophets of doom.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Glovebox Mixtape.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Inspirational Rear View Mirror Message

Which leads me to my second point.  There’s no shortage of us, (Schaefer included, it seems), who get off on all the Post Ballard/Dystopian/Failed Modernism/Entropy-fixated stuff.  Let’s face it, there are real thrills to be had from hanging around under road intersections or abandoned factory buildings, cataloguing picturesque decay, trespassing into restricted tracts of infrastructure, or driving nowhere at night.  Such activities provide, to a greater or lesser extent, a frisson of transgression not available through the standard channels of consumption, just as they are themselves gradually accepted as new branches of mainstream culture.  Will all these rehearsals for the Apocalypse seem such fun once the sky actually starts to fall though?  Similarly, a fascination with the ways a life lived increasingly behind the wheel effects our perceptions of the world as an aesthetic exercise, [3.], can stand in for any deeper consideration of the real implications of all this dependence on the internal combustion engine and a petro-chemical economy.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Library Area.

Not that any of this signals any real change in my own agenda.  Indeed, a significant part of me still holds to the view that an artist’s real role is to respond to the world as they find it, as much as it is to seek to affect change.  Indeed, it’s all too easy to get tied up in an internal debate over whether one’s artistic concerns are a sub-set of bigger, global issues, or vice-versa.  In reality, it may be that for many of us, artistic practice is a manageable way of exerting some rationalising control over life in the face of all the stuff that just seems to big to influence.  I’d like to believe the two things aren’t mutually exclusive, though, and that one might be the thin end of the other.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Service Area

Mostly, I’m just glad that there are artists around like Janek Schaefer, with motives more noble or generous than my own, who are trying to prove it’s possible to produce thrilling, aesthetically resonant work, whilst still remaining seriously engaged.

Janek Schaefer

[1.]:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Lay-By Lullaby’, 12k, 2014.  Also Presented As A Sound Installation.

[2.]:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Asleep At The Wheel’, Multi-Media Interactive Installation, IF Milton Keynes International Festival, 2010.

[3.]:  David Cronenberg (Dir.), 'Crash', Canada/UK, Alliance Communication Corp./The Movie Network/Recorded Picture Company, 1997.

[4.]:  Or indeed, a kind of Post Modern relish for the Baroque excesses of custom car culture or the spectacular rituals of drag racing.  I'm aware of the irony.

[5.]:  These include the extensive audio elements played within the cars, along with Schaefer's accompanying 'Glovebox Mixtape'.  The latter is also presented as a cassette, designed to be kept in a car.  It is full of gorgeous drones and ambiences, and not unlike 'Lay-By Lullaby' in tone.  It omits the traffic noise of the latter for the most part though, which might, of course, be provided by one's journey in real time.