Raheel Khan

5.1 surround sound installation | Duration: 25mins

Raheel Khan 

Hum Drum

2023

Event – 5pm, Sun 1 Oct: closing performance by musician, feeo, in response to the themes and space of Khan’s installation.

Hum Drum is a surround sound installation that evokes the labour and experiences of diasporic migrant communities. The sounds heard in the work are collaged from staged dialogues; sounds of working machinery, including fridges and transport; recordings of taxi workers in Manchester from Khan’s previous works; and compositions with the harmonium, viola, upright piano and flute.

Drawing from his lived experiences, Khan presents a story that highlights the relationships between work, service and ambition. The composition opens with a dialogue staged around a reading of the Certificate of British Citizenship, foregrounding the vulnerability of citizenship and migrant rights in the UK. As the work unfolds, this precarity is contrasted with the essential nature of the work performed by members of migrant communities, evoked through reference to the everyday soundscape of our cities.

Raheel Khan is an artist and musician whose practice explores the interstices between sound, text, music and installation. Originally studying Economics, Raheel has moved towards a practice that centres the notions of movement, displacement and policy, often creating through abstraction & compositional methods. His current research explores repetitive motions, machine noise, devotional loops, acoustic pressures and vacant infrastructures, alternating and exchanging between these elements as a starting point to make his work.

Hum Drum is a Deptford X commission

Image credits: Raheel Khan, ‘Hum Drum’, 2023, Commissioned by Deptford X. Photos: Katarzyna Perlak.