Open Invitation

If Deep Time is a frame to understand scales of time that are beyond human experience and history, then rocks are the witness to Deep Time.

The Project

Open Invitation Collective is a group of artists who share similar concerns around ecology, the environment and how we inhabit our planet. After a year-long research process we are excited to share the research process and art works where we explore geological time, ancient landscape, and human presence through conscious listening. The art works that we have created are contemplative, immersive, and experiential.

This project has been supported by SONIC MATTER, Switzerland and SWISSNEX, India

The People

Shabari Rao (lead research artist) is an artist and educator whose work is grounded in practice based research. Her primary interest is in the question: what counts as knowledge and how is the body involved in creating it?

Bindhumalini Narayanswamy (collaborating artist) is a singer and composer interested in exploring and expressing the soul stirring power of music and silence.

Manush John (collaborating artist) is an artist and filmmaker who is interested in critically looking at human systems and knowledge creation in the context of impending environmental catastrophe.

Navya Sah (collaborating artist) is an Indian multidisciplinary artist who works in the realms of sound, film, movement and writing. Her work studies emotional responses on the politics of power and love. She likes the quiet.

When Thejaswi Shvanand (collaborating geologist) began reading in childhood, the Indian tectonic plate was farther away from the Eurasian plate by 66 cm. He likes to track the consequences of this plate movement during annual hikes in the Himalayas while continuing to read and work as a curator and library educator at Champaca Bookstore and Children's Library.

The Work

Open Invitation
Experimental Film
The film visually explores the relationship of the human form to the landscape. There is also an attention to time in the film, which seeks to evoke a sense of expanse and immersion. The film has no words, and is non-narrative.

Singing Body
Live Performance
Singing Body is an improvisational performance score that brings movement and sound together through the common modality of breath. It explores a meditative, mindful, contemplative journey through movement and stillness, sound and silence that unfolds from a place of conscious listening.

Across Deep Time
Sound album
Exploring immersive soundscapes that play with space and presence, this album seeks to capture the sonic texture of the landscape through eco-acoustic experiments.