Festival Commissions 2023
Raheel Khan
Hum Drum
5.1 surround sound installation | Duration: 30mins
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, music and installation. Originally studying Economics, Raheel has moved towards a practice that explores the abstraction in personal narratives through various forms of composition. He is interested in repetitive motions, vacant infrastructures and geometric design, alternating and exchanging between these elements as a starting point to make his work. He is currently in the first year of his MFA at Goldsmiths
Hum Drum is a Deptford X commission