MAJEMUK (2025)
7.1 channel sound sculpture, 88pages 11meters zine
Comissioned by Akademie Der Künste through artistic reserach fellowship “Every Artist must take sides”
Presented in Akademie Der Künste from 13 November 2026 to 31 January 2026, with extended concert at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) on 6 December 2025, and an experimental radio piece broadcasted by Deutchlandfunkkultur Klangkunst in January 2026.
The first Asian-African Conference, held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, sparked Ariel Orah's artistic exploration of the legacy of Eslanda and Paul Robeson. Due to the invalidation of their passports, the Robesons were only able to comment from afar on the meeting of their comrades who declared to oppose colonialism and to promote peaceful cooperation among independent nations, but they immediately recognized this historic moment as the beginning of a new era.
Orah's spatial multimedia installation arranges the anklung, a bamboo instrument that was played in Bandung in 1955 and is based on the Sundanese pentatonic, with a Western setup of music stands and scale systems as well as a custom-modified double-neck guitar and bass, on unevenly aligned pedestals in a semi-circular resonance space. The complex frequencies of the hybrid instrument represent both sonically and metaphorically the multi-layered, nuanced dialogues that the Robesons initiated through their bridging of continents, disciplines and political movements. Based on the sonification of archival data sets and a speculative vocal performance, Orah's composition creates a “listening field for diasporic frequencies, sonic diplomacy and the radical poetics of multi-alignment” that calls for mutual empathy: can we learn to hear one another despite different frequencies and unequal grounds?
Alluding to the Non-Aligned Movement that formed in the aftermath of the Bandung conference, Orah proposes instead Multi-Alignment as an alternative to binary diplomacy – a brave space in which different scales, frequencies and worldviews can coexist in tension, not resolution. This space for gathering and negotiation is framed on the outside by a publication that, in the style of a subcultural, political zine, processes archival research in essays, photomontages and cooking recipes and documents a workshop that Orah organized for diaspora artists in Berlin.
- Lina Brion -
Orah's spatial multimedia installation arranges the anklung, a bamboo instrument that was played in Bandung in 1955 and is based on the Sundanese pentatonic, with a Western setup of music stands and scale systems as well as a custom-modified double-neck guitar and bass, on unevenly aligned pedestals in a semi-circular resonance space. The complex frequencies of the hybrid instrument represent both sonically and metaphorically the multi-layered, nuanced dialogues that the Robesons initiated through their bridging of continents, disciplines and political movements. Based on the sonification of archival data sets and a speculative vocal performance, Orah's composition creates a “listening field for diasporic frequencies, sonic diplomacy and the radical poetics of multi-alignment” that calls for mutual empathy: can we learn to hear one another despite different frequencies and unequal grounds?
Alluding to the Non-Aligned Movement that formed in the aftermath of the Bandung conference, Orah proposes instead Multi-Alignment as an alternative to binary diplomacy – a brave space in which different scales, frequencies and worldviews can coexist in tension, not resolution. This space for gathering and negotiation is framed on the outside by a publication that, in the style of a subcultural, political zine, processes archival research in essays, photomontages and cooking recipes and documents a workshop that Orah organized for diaspora artists in Berlin.
- Lina Brion -
Foto: © Moritz Haase.
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Photo : Ariel Orah
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