Performances
How to Dream a Rasa Machine
Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
An immersive techno-ritual unlike any other. Join us for a performance by Dominique Savitri Bonarjee as she presents “How to Dream a Rasa Machine,” a sensuous journey into sound, movement, and the subtle energies of our world. Structured as an electrifying jam session, blending electronic and acoustic textures with embodied dance, this performance is deeply inspired by the intricacies of Indian rasa. At its heart lies a handcrafted copper sound suit, a revolutionary instrument that translates the performer’s every motion and environmental nuances – gravity, air, humidity – into a rich sonic landscape.
In Indian aesthetics, rasa refers to the spiritual pleasure of deep immersion in experience. Here, the audience encounters rasa through the sensuous materiality of the instrument, and a spectral soundscape that induces a collective dream-space.
This is followed by ‘Butoh, as Heard by a Dancer’, book presentation.
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Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Dominique-Savitri is an Indian French artist, writer, and educator, practicing internationally. Growing up in diverse cultures, she is guided by the water body as principle of fluidity and betweenness – between identities, disciplines, states of matter. This leads to her varied art practice in which she creates ritual actions and immersive spaces, bringing together choreography, sound composition, and visual elements. Inspired by her research into dance as ‘rebellion of the body’, her artworks manifest a visceral aliveness, that challenges art as object. She completed her contemporary art PhD, entitled “Space of the Nameless”, at Goldsmiths University of London (2024).
During her PhD she began developing handcrafted computational artworks with female e-textile collective, Kobakant, seeing it as a path to a more democratic technological future. Staging her art means summoning more-than-human witnesses; Savitri favours unexpected locations, in nature, derelict buildings, and public space. Highlights include COLLAPSE, a large-scale dance activation in the City of London, installations at the Nakanojo Biennale (Japan), a performance at Kunstfest Weimar, and a collaboration with eco-feminist author Astrida Neimanis for Lofoten International Arts Festival.
