Overexposed Podcast & Exhaust featuring Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

Monday 29 November 10:49

Writer, theorist and Sonic Acts artist-in-residence Maryam Monalisa Gharavi deals with the paradoxes of our interactions with matter and immateriality, the seen and unseen, underlying everyday life and its common preconceptions. Addressing these concerns, Gharavi reflects on her work in the latest episode of the OVEREXPOSED podcast, as well as in a roundtable conversation on oil and data that took place during Exhaust, an online event earlier this year. In the OVEREXPOSED podcast, presented and produced in collaboration with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, participants of the residency programme OVEREXPOSED are invited to discuss artefacts that have moved their practice in a lasting way. With the second round of this residency now in progress, we present a further podcast from one the programme’s first six residents. This latest episode sees resident Maryam Monalisa Gharavi recalling the impact of watching Luis Buñuel’s 1950 film Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones, known in the United States as The Young and the Damned). In particular, she describes how a particular moment from the film – in which a blind man and a chicken stare at one another – struck her as a profound reminder of the limits of knowledge and visuality. This opens up a deeper discussion about issues central to her work, in an evocative reflection on extraction, exhaustion, covered faces, transparency, oil and data.

→ The Overexposed Podcast can be found on all major podcast platforms. Gharavi was also the co-producer of Exhaust, an online roundtable discussion that took place on 27 February 2021, featuring political and environmental anthropologist Omolade Adunbi, media artist and programmer Ryan Kuo, artist and geographer Helen Pritchard and interdisciplinary researcher Andrea Sempértegui, with moderation by critic, curator and art historian Murtaza Vali. Taking as its starting point the phrase ‘data is the new oil’ – coined in 2006 by British mathematician (and customer loyalty card inventor) Clive Humby – Exhaust drew on the insights of eminent academic thinkers and influential practitioners to speculate, critique and make visible the cultural geography of oil and data. → A recording of the discussion is now available, with captions, on YouTube and Vimeo, where you can also find many other conversations, performances and works from OVEREXPOSED residents and other Sonic Acts participants. About OVEREXPOSED OVEREXPOSED is a residency programme from Sonic Acts investigating pollution and its effects on everything living and non-living, through which we aim to create awareness about pollution both in local surroundings and on a planetary scale. Using artistic research as an exploration of the connections between aesthetics, historical materiality and politics, the programme intends to stimulate thought and imagination about necessary steps – both locally and globally – and of course, direct action. The outcomes of the research will be presented in a variety of formats, including text publications, visual journals, and performative or discursive presentations.