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

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Call to prayer

Dhaka is known as the city of Mosques, around 5am every morning the call to prayer begins. I went up onto the roof to listen and try to record, on my noisy camera, the amazing song and the way the calls sound as though they are in 'layers'.
In the dark the sound seems to move across the city, as if carried by the breeze, in waves. The songs weave between each other, some close, some far away, making multiple layers of sound at different densities. Crows 'kha', birds start to call, vehicles move past in the street below, the horns of cars and trucks as people wake. There is the sound of a train as it departs from the other side of the city.

Listen to the recording here: Call to prayer across Dhaka.