Subcontinentment

Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

Subcontinentment forms part of a series of interconnected works by Himali Singh Soin that comprise fictional mythologies for the poles, told from the nonhuman perspective of an elder that has witnessed the depth of time: the ice. It posits a metaphysics in which the human is humbled and other, alien voices are allowed to speak. Sonified as experimental audio soundscape in collaboration with musician David Soin Tappeser the piece derives from the recently published almanac we are opposite like that, that thinks through alienation and intimacy, ecological loss and the loss of home, and explores the geography and imaginary of the polar regions through a series of dreamlike documents, love letters, poems, and predictions.

“Subcontinentment is a manifesto that stems from my fieldwork in the polar circles, where I was confronted with my alienness as a brown body in a landscape commonly used for outer-space simulation experiments. As part of a series of fictional ice archives, south Asian futurism, renamed subcontinentment, anti-chronicles the geopoetic links between the poles and the subcontinent. In transforming the text into a soundscape, David and I began finding correspondences and intersections between my polar recordings and the hyper, denuded aural environment of Delhi under lockdown. Cawing crows, a static in the ether of the polyphonous city, intertwined with screeching skuas, lone reminders of life in the expansive nothingness of the “white” continent.”(HSS)