Nandita Kumar: From Paradigm to Paradigm, Into the Biomic Time

As the challenges and environmental consequences of climate change are manifested, Nandita Kumar reflects on the knowledge gap between the scientific community, political spheres, and the populace at large. While fake news has plagued climate and environmental science for decades, slowing or completely derailing “progress,” information overload, complexity, and lack of meaning has left people feeling anxious and powerless to enact real environmental change.
Kumar’s work deconstructs political rhetoric related to various environmental issues by collating statements made by influential individuals, politicians, and organizations. Employing the very methods of data manipulation and fake news, the statements were transformed by an algorithmic “haiku” generator in order to produce a poem to accompany each of the untrue statements. Forming a glitching musical code, the resulting ninety-one haikus play out through a forty-foot pianola score. The accompanying digital publication allows the viewer to connect each of the poems to its original statement, alongside expanded essays detailing the truth behind these falsehoods.

The sound installation has been collaboratively developed during Kumar’s DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program residency and comprises five sonic journeys representing the elements – earth, water, fire, air, and void – and will culminate in a performance that includes voicing the haikus alongside the pianola player, a collage of found sound and live foley with refuse and recycled objects.

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme” – Mark Twain