Ladakhi artist and composer Ruhail Qaisar has created a new performance piece bringing together aspects of poetry, visual art, and sound design. Drawing on the phenomenon of the poetic image, from the recesses of memory paired with intimate visuals of Ladakhi life from the tail end of the late 1990s and threaded through with an original musical score composed, created, and improvised with a deep sense of vernacular dialectic and the collective unconscious. Together this reins us towards the mind of an individual exponent. Combining the artist’s personal biography with an experimental model of storytelling sprawling beyond the audiovisual medium, Meetings 1997-1998 is rooted in the magnificent atmosphere and the landscape of Ladakh and its permeation in the minds of the local individual.
The MusicMaker's Hacklab is an intensive weeklong collaborative environment, where Hacklab fellows, selected via an open call, experiment, and exchange to bring new musical ideas to life. A series of Hacklab Input talks, open to the public, are given by diverse experts in music creation throughout Hacklab week. Hacklab fellows present their work on day seven at a finale event. This year's Hacklab is titled Off the Fovea.
The Hounds of Pamir is an active monthly radio residency aired on Hong Kong Community Radio
60-minute live compositions improvised and performed live on a Model- D, through a recent post- pandemic shift back to my home in Ladakh since June this 2020.
Retracing old steps and retrieving lost images from a non-existent memory hole. As well as nurturing the praxis of artistic creation during the Covid-19 lockdown, with a limited set-up vis à vis the very cold, elevated, remote yet unique habitat of Ladakh. Reflecting and drawing on the drastic shift of seasons, 3 months of below -10 degree Celsius temperature, old Silk-Route travel journals, and rural legends.
A 3-track album released independently consisting of improvisations with binaural frequencies designed to make the listener nauseous.
A single drawing on vocal improvisations, composed while being under the spell of a disease.
LTALAM is a 4-track mini-album that draws on the solipsism and the decay of historical structures, family homes, and the inevitable pollution of the alleys within old - town Leh, built in the 10th Century. A place where identities were as organic as the structures once, but the tourism-based economy pounded concrete dilapidations within both these structures and the local identity.
Ruhail Qaisar is a self-taught artist from Ladakh, India. His work
focuses on sound-creation, left-field art, analog photography, and
experimental filmmaking. He has been making music and performing all
over India since 2016.
As a musician, he explores memory, intergenerational trauma, and the
operational swarm of the unconscious through sonic inscription and the
incorporation of gestures and improvisation.
The work serves to transmit memories carried through events and local
mythos as developed through his recollections of growing up in the
older section of Leh, India.