HAROON MIRZA - A
FOUNDATION, LIVERPOOL.UK
Dates: 2
October - 14 November 2009
31 OCTOBER 2009
Written by
NICK STROWBRIDGE
Arbitrary sculptural elements melted into acoustic
pulsations in a vat marked ‘Cultural History’ forms
the basis of the new bag of tricks pulled from
Haroon Mirza’s sleeve at Liverpool’s A Foundation.
Haroon Mirza Installation view
From almost every component of each installation at
his first solo exhibition, artist Haroon Mirza
coaxes a sound which subverts the original purpose
of the equipment; transistor radios play beats of
static interference, turntables are stuck in locked
grooves of metallic scratching, but more
startlingly, Mirza manipulates the Cat Stevens song
‘Father and Son’ into something enjoyable.
With merciful sampling of the song’s opening riff
Mirza abandons those cloyingly sentimental lyrics
(‘find a girl, settle down / if you want you can
marry, / look at me, I am old but I’m happy’ – yeah,
it’s that song) in Adhãn (2009), a
piece which takes its name from the Arabic name for
the Islamic call to prayer; a sly reference to
Stevens’ conversion.
Adhãn Haroon Mirza [2009]
The tall ceilings of A Foundation’s Blade Factory
allow the musical vibrations to swim, to bob around
their vaulted enclosure, rolling all over the
symbols of the New York dance scene that the King of
Pop once ruled, and spread themselves thinly over
the somewhat arbitrary objects in a false semantic
cloak. Like Nam June Paik’s marriage of the visual
and acoustic, the potentiality of dormant energy
lying hidden in everyday objects is revealed by
Mirza’s fast hand.
Haroon Mirza Installation view
The snippet of the 1970s MoR balladeer binds to
unlikely visual and acoustic correspondences of
other devices in the work. Spasmodic light bursts
from a desk lamp are manipulated into a syncopated
beat which pops and buzzes from a dusty radio set;
we hear a cello through an antique speaker cabinet,
with video of the gliding bow projected against its
veneer. Synchronizing these stimuli with the Cat
Stevens nugget, Mirza builds an aural and visual
harmony from seemingly discordant sources. And
layered against a wash of white noise this creates a
genuinely serene mood.
Haroon Mirza [2009]
Whilst the instruments of Adhãn build into
structured audiovisual performance, Paradise Loft
(2009) is immediately bewildering; a transistor
radio spins wildly upon a turntable, a skewed video
projection occupies one wall whilst garbled words
and a punching mechanical rhythm fill the space. Yet
the larger scale of this installation also allows
viewers to tune into and synthesize the role
performed by each found component, immersed in the
more complex visual and acoustic rhythms of the
piece.
Paradise Loft Haroon Mirza [2009]
Try crouching next to the speaker with the
shabbiest, most antique vibe, listening to each
tasty warm buzz of static to really get you going.
http://www.afoundation.org.uk/
http://www.clickfolio.com/haroon/
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