DRAF Studio – A performance by Haroon Mirza

About

Artist Haroon Mirza presents a performance for DRAF Studio.

Haroon Mirza has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. He combines a variety of readymade and time based material to create audio compositions, which are often realised as performances, site-specific installations and kinetic sculptures.

Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms. “All music is organised sound or organised noise,” he says. “So as long as you’re organising acoustic material, it’s just the perception and the context that defines it as music or noise or sound or just a nuisance” (2013).

An advocate of interference (in the sense of electro-acoustic or radio disruption), he creates situations that purposefully cross wires. He describes his role as a composer, manipulating electricity, a live, invisible and volatile phenomenon and calling on instruments as varied as household electronics, vinyl and turntables, LEDs, furniture, video footage and existing artworks to behave differently.

The event is part of DRAF’s Spring 17 season looking at the intersections between music, sound and art; which includes performances by artist duo Emptyset (Paul Purgas and James Ginzburg) and Swedish musician Jay-Jay Johanson.

DRAF Studio is supported by Arts Council England and DRAF Galleries Circle.

Haroon Mirza (b. 1977, UK) lives and works in London. He has a BA in Painting from Winchester School of Art, an MA in Design Critical Practice and Theory from Goldsmiths College (2006) and an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design (2007). Solo exhibitions include Entheogens, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2017), ããã, Pivô, São Paulo (2016), Circuits & Sequences, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin, Emerging Paradigm, Matadero Madrid, Haroon Mirza/hrm199 Ltd., Museum Tinguely, Basel (2015), The Light Hours, Villa Savoye, Poissy, Are Jee Be? , Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2014), The Hepworth, Wakefield (2013) and The New Museum, New York (2012). His work was included in the Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2016), The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, China (2012) and the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice (2011), where he was awarded the Silver Lion. Among other awards he has won CERN’s Collide International Award in 2017, Calder Prize in 2015, Nam June Paik Art Center Prize and Zurich Art Prize in 2014, the DAIWA Foundation Art Prize in 2012 and Northern Art Prize in 2011. He is represented by Lisson Gallery.