
Oram Awards Series: Poulomi Desai
Multidisciplinary artist and curator Poulomi Desai creates an improvised sonic and visual cut up journey using elements from past compositions and political video works.
Oram Award winner Poulomi Desai is a multidisciplinary artist and curator. She is self-taught and for over 30 years, has been involved in performance, live art, sound and photography installations interrogating the politics of identity, listening and perception, inspired by her activist and DIY post punk background.
She subverts broken sitars into new electronic instruments for improvised performance, melding circuit bent toys, modified cassette decks, optikinetic instruments, kitchen knives, redundant electronics, axes and massage tools. She works with collage, video, field recordings, VLF radio noise, petri dish bacterial photography and ideas of ‘electromagnetic black noise’, embracing chance, loss of control and questioning 'authenticity'.