Gharīb is an ongoing series of works connected to sonic dissent and alternate political systems. This research formed the solo show called Gharīb as the Armenia Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, curated by Anne Davidian. The Pavilion explored forms of world ordering, both musical and political, which remain outside the Western imaginaries. Here, the gharīb is read as a dissonance to the prevailing understandings of time, rhythm, and attunement.
From the essay This World Will Disappear Before You Read It:
“Musical and political ways of organisation have mimicked each other for a long time. Dominant musical logic can often be perceived as a direct mirror image of the prevailing political system. One doesn’t need much imagination to compare the inner mechanisms of a tonal system with a certain governing body – both relying on the necessity of hierarchy, tension, and solution. The powers that be and dominant seventh chords twirling hand in hand.
What if instead of a mere twirl, we’d rotate instead? Rotate into songs that have never been there in the first place, rotate into oblivion, rotate outside of the centre, into the periphery, bending the tension embedded in your voice, getting ready to sing those last songs before the end.”