Forage Friction

Elvin Brandhi (UK)

Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist and beat producer instigating projects of improvised socio-aesthetic overflow expanding haphazardly with circus intent. The main body of her education takes shape via contextual shifts and collaborations, as alternative to institutional micro-mythological artistic specialization and ladder climbing self-optimisation. Her practice involves performing wherever and whenever possible, composing audio-sonic essays, videos, sample-based beats and theatrical public hacking. She uses sound and image as an expansive gestural-emotive language transgressing intrinsic systemics and inherited syntactical etiquettes. Her performances are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. She currently has no base, expanding sonic mutation as a constantly morphing communicational code. She performs in various collaborations such as 'Yeah You', which was released on Alter, Slip, Opal, Psychik Dancehall and Good Food. Other groups include 'Bad@Maths', 'INSIN', 'Gailvn Keiln', User Syndrome, BAHK (a collaboration with Daniel Blumberg), Pollution Opera (with Nadah El Shazly), and Soul Sick (with DJ Scotch Egg), among many collaborations. In 2017, she was given a PRS Oram Award for Innovative Female Musicians, which funded her ongoing portable studio project — making albums anywhere anytime without anyone, battery-op, in the interest of de-formalising music production.

Tengal (PH)

TENGAL is a composer, media artist, curator, and cultural instigator, engaged in research-based production that bridges art, technology, and society. Tengal started as a musician and composer with a penchant for game theory and algorithmic structures. His compositional works, such as the Gangan Series, have been performed all over Europe and Asia. Since 2005, he has initiated various projects in Manila and across Southeast Asia. Notably, he founded the art organization SABAW Media Art Kitchen, a curatorial platform specializing in sound and media art. In 2008, he established the Philippines' first international media art festival and symposium, WSK Festival of the Recently Possible. From 2017 to 2018, Tengal curated the exhibition 'INTERSTICES: Manifolds of The In-between' and served as the guest director for 'Self-reflexivity: Thinking Media and Digital Articulations' at the Tokyo Media Art Festival MeCA | Media Culture in Asia, initiated by the Japan Foundation. Tengal co-created the international platform NUSASONIC, a collaboration between YES NO KLUB, WSK Festival of The Recently Possible, Playfreely/BlackKaji, CTM Festival, and the Goethe Institute — a multi-year project exploring experimental sound and music cultures in Southeast Asia. Recently relocating to Berlin, Tengal served as curator-at-large at Art Laboratory Berlin and played a significant role as co-curator of 'Hackers, Makers, Thinkers' and 'Radyo Somatodelia: Experiments in Sonic Animism.'

Artist Bios

Elvin Brandhi (UK)

Tengal (PH)

Documentation