WORM interviews Avita Maheen from Kalponik Rekha

কাল্পনিক রেখা / Kalponik Rekha is an intriguing series of music events that has been running intermittently at WORM since 2023. It is a platform initiated by musician and scholar Avita Maheen, dedicated to foster collaborative engagement between South Asian artists working across sound, performance and media.

Avita came to Europe to change tack, from working as an electrical and electronic engineer to becoming an artist and researcher. She studied Media Technology at Leiden University and took classes at the ArtScience department at KABK. Before she moved from Bangladesh, she worked as a student and as a musician, and over time realised that pursuing sound and media arts gave her a sense of cohesion in what she saw as a “dual life”. WORM asked her about how the nights were going. Pictures courtesy of Avita Maheen.

Avita, what is the backstory of কাল্পনিক রেখা / Kalponik Rekha?

AM: There are a few reasons. First of all I came to Europe in 2019 to do a masters on a study programme. I didn’t really have the plan to go to Europe and it was an opportunity and I took it by chance. In fact, I had never been to Europe before, and I didn’t really know all the different iterations of music in Europe, like, say, underground music. So after I came here, because I am a traditional musician – as is my mother –  I went to a lot of underground events. And it was new, but at the same time oddly familiar. Especially with a lot of experimental, drone-like music.

And at the beginning of my time here, I didn’t fully put two and two together. Mainly because the iterations and expressions of experimental music in Europe was so new to me. But back then, I was thinking how a lot of the experimental realm here is oddly reminiscent of classical music from South Asia. And I was trying to understand the contextual differences between how we define these things, or the format of something. 

Tell us a bit of how you experienced music back home?

Bengali culture is inherently tied to music and literature and both my parents are tied to music and literature. The first thing my dad purchased when he had his first job was a tape recorder, in the late 1970s. He plays the tabla and my mother is a singer who plays the harmonium. My favourite part of my mother’s practice happens every Bengali New Year on 14 April, when we celebrate the Bengali and solar new year. I would wake up in the middle of the night – before dawn – and go to the open-air venue where musicians were already playing sitar, flute, esraaj, and other instruments. As the sun began to rise, my mother and her group would gather on stage to sing the New Year song, welcoming the new year with the sunrise. 

And then experiencing live music in Europe. What was that like?

 I didn’t really know anyone from South Asia who was in the music scene in Europe. So I was feeling a bit lonely in the scene myself. It can be fun with people making similar music, without the cultural discourse, but you can also get lost in those systems. So, I was trying to meet people from that region and simultaneously trying to understand what exactly is classical music and what is contemporary music and what is really the difference? Is it just musicality, or context – the ambience and aesthetics, and environments – around them?

When did you start to meet people from South Asia here?

Well, to do that, in part, I started curating this initiative. Which was also based around me thinking that, if I am feeling scattered, there are other people who are also scattered. Once I started actively looking for people, I found them. So for me it’s an initiative that also became about collective, or community engagement between people. 

Context is a term that is a moveable feast: you mentioned being or feeling scattered… How did these meetings provide a context to change that? And how did this context develop?

It’s not really answerable! What I have found to be true is that there are connecting points, musically, but there is always so much knowledge out there; so for me the context is filling in the blanks. And there are still several blanks! But, each time you do something, you also take into account the other artists’ personal or cultural, or societal reality. That builds the context.

Are Kalponik Rekha nights a set-piece? As an introduction to people and their music? As nights introducing new music can increasingly be a challenge for the uninitiated.

Kalponik Rekha is a Bengali term that translates to “imaginary terrain.” It refers to loose geographical definitions and contemporary contexts of South Asian subculture. Bengal itself is divided between India and Bangladesh, and, being from Bangladesh and working in Europe, I often notice that the idea of South Asia is understood mainly through India, and a very specific part of it. But the region is much larger and more diverse than a single nation-state. Kalponik Rekha became a way to introduce perspectives outside this dominant understanding and communicate the multiplicity of South Asia.

But as a night, Kalponik Rekha operates both ways: yes, the nights are there to introduce, but it’s also there [as a night] to introduce the musicians to each other. And to build a larger network. There is something else I have been trying to do over the last two editions: an improvisational set at the end with the two artists.They haven’t worked together before.  But it’s, like, an improvisation that can be fun but also very scary. As all these artists have their own personal process that they present. 

For me, I want to build collaborations for the future: something we can build on and use to support each other. The artists can take from the audience and the other artists and find new contexts.  

You mentioned earlier the parallels with your own background that you saw when you first came here: what were they? What were the things that struck you?

I think the first instance was drone music: I was going to a number of drone music concerts. I can’t remember which one exactly, but I thought, this is very similar to the kind of music I would call classical music. And then there was also the idea of, let’s say, how to explain experimental music to my family, who are very traditional. I found that to be rather easy to explain. For instance: there are resonances in different instruments and they are such a strong part of traditional music. And that idea is often present in contemporary music in Europe.  So it’s the expressions of instruments that are at the centre of this [parallel], especially in an electro-acoustic context. They have the function of being resonated, or creating feedback: in turn creating the context of pure sound. I think that when you grow up with string or resonant instruments, you don’t think about it but it is part of your embodied “musical structure”.

South Asian and Indian classical music has different metres and structures that express different emotions, doesn’t it? How did the western post-war drone music differ, do you feel? In its intention?

Maybe there was no intention for western postwar avant-garde music. But it has intention, nevertheless; whether to involve shock or surprise and that also comes in part in how you the listener receives it.  That’s down to the context you are coming from. So, for example, maybe something is really random, but it can make me, the listener, feel emotional. In general, the structures of western and South Asian classical music are really different. In one of the editions, I remember someone talking about tuning instruments in a microtonal setting, but for me that would be the regular setting.  So it has a lot to do with the notion of a standard structure. And there is no standard structure everywhere. 

Do you find the audience reactions interesting?

Definitely! I think it’s also better when you don’t have an expectation or an understanding even. Often music is just about physical embodiment. And you can use your intuition and just receive it. I think a lot of South Asian music is about embodiment. Even if it is intentional – there is music you play at sunrise and not in the afternoon, for example. It has to do with human mood and feeling and the cycle of the human body.

What do you think of WORM as a promoter, especially of something that isn’t perceived as a standard night? There is the classic set up of the main hall, there to deal with the standard way of putting on a show, but it’s a strange old place isn’t it? What do you think of the place?

I love it. Maybe I am a bit biased, but I love just being there, or using the sound studio, or listening to new music there, or just having the time to reflect on my experiences as a musician. It has a multi-facetted personality as a place, and we all see WORM from our own understanding of it. I go to film screenings or concerts but I know it from the place where I see mostly avant-garde or contemporary music. But I wouldn’t know what it’s like as a club, or an exhibition space. And I think every audience understands WORM differently.

And when you put a gig on here?

I am really fascinated by visual theatricality. When I host something at WORM I know they have very professional sound and light people there. So you can work with the stage, and with the lighting design to create a visual mood of the set. Personally, I really appreciate stage theatricality. And that is where I think WORM is uncontested, as a place. I think this visual element makes a show at WORM into a hybrid form of music, working across performance and music.   

…You know, I think I want to make a really big music opera at WORM. We have a different tradition of musical performances and naturally I like seeing staged performances, and these can be very experimental in their nature. I want to do something completely experimental, so I have no idea how it will take shape. The shows I curate are an education for me: allowing me to take notes so I can direct a full-blown, durational opera piece!