Making Space:Sensing Place

In October 2009, along with artist Thurle Wright, I was awarded a Making Space:Sensing Place Fellowship; part of the HAT: Here and There International Exchange Programme, managed by A Fine Line:Cultural Practice. The Fellowship includes residencies with Britto Arts in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with Arts Reverie in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, with The V&A Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green, London and with The Harley Gallery, Nottinghamshire. Working and collaborating with artists and craftspeople from the UK, Bangladesh and India, responding to the collections and spaces we encounter and sharing these experiences through a touring exhibition and educational workshops.

This blog, which is still developing and being added to, is a record of my experiences during the MS:SP Fellowship. Steven Follen.
www.stevenfollen.com

Friday 12 February 2010

Call for alms

I was awoken by the sound of men chanting, The sound seemed to fill the flat and if fact the whole building, it echoed up through the narrow passageway between the houses. I got up and went to the windows and then to the roof of the building to try and see where the sound was coming from but couldn't see. I learnt later that the source was a group of severely physically handicapped men who lived on the streets and who made their way around the the city calling for compassion (alms). Every Friday they passed the house, in the morning.

Listen: Sounds of Dhaka - Men chanting

The noise of the clanking in the background is of other men working on a nearby building site, hammering steel reinforcing rods.