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Immense psychic reservoir - softly flowing off in time and space

This specially commissioned lecture at Modern Art Oxford critically explored discourses between East and West in the work of internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood, examining his use of sound within the wider context of the history of Sound Art and Experimental Music. Exploring notions of audience and immersion, the lecture traced an elaborate network of relationships between the musical traditions of Sufism, Buddhism and Hinduism as well as western popular culture and avant-garde art practice. It responded to Dawood’s definition and use of the gallery as a ‘psychological space,’ examining the writings of theorists such as Richard Kostelanetz and the work of avant-garde figures including La Monte Young, Brion Gysin, Angus MacLise and Tony Conrad.

Dawood’s monumental recreation of Gysin’s Dream Machine clearly reflects the artist’s own interrogation of western popular culture and non-western cultural practices, and his New Dream Machine Project established a discourse between seemingly disparate reference points such as The Rolling Stones, William Burroughs, Moroccan Sufi music (The Master Musicians of Jajouka) and contemporary popular music. The lecture also explored ‘location’ as a central motif in Dawood’s work, evaluating his belief that ‘...the city is as much a protagonist as any of the characters.‘ It examined films such as Feature and Piercing Brightness within the context of contemporary sound art practice, focusing particularly upon the work of Keith Rowe, Bill Fontana and Max Neuhaus. Located within the context of Dawood’s contemporary visual art and new media practice (described by the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art as investigating ‘the problems underpinning our assumptions about both cultural hybridity or authenticity’) this lecture established a critical discourse centred upon the artist’s interrogation of East/West cultural dichotomies and the role that music plays in this.