—out-of-line— is a virtual exhibition space that employs the mobile device and the act of calling and messaging to showcase sound and text-based works by artists.

This project stemmed from my work esclapse (2018) and grew into an exhibition with 8 other artists over the phone-lines. The first iteration (2019) was in collaboration with Suvani Suri, and it also took a physical form the same year as part of a group show- Real Time Tactics curated by Mila Samdub, in the context of The earth is still going around the sun : CISA 2019 Exhibitions, a project by Khoj International Artists’ Association, at IIC, New Delhi along with 5 practitioners.

To feature ‘sound works on a phone line’ is suggestive of a new site/ medium of ‘listening’ bound to the contemporary techno-culture, embedded within the economy of attention and time. The multifarious examination of the role of the ‘smartphone’ or mobile device in simultaneous production and propagation of an auditory imagination, is accompanied by rethinking the way we listen to and engage with the materiality of sound in artistic practice.

The sensorium of the ubiquitous mobile device not only amplifies and extends our selves but also privatises auditory space, producing a sonic intimacy that trespasses time and geographical distances. To further elaborate, the project attempts to use subscription-based automated tele-calling to host and transmit artworks. Automated calls are usually pre-recorded outbound calls implemented in bulk and used by service providers and companies for advertising, sales, banking, feedback, promotions, reminders, announcements, electoral campaigns and propaganda. Contending ideas of agency, control, activation, disruption, liveness and temporality underlie this system and service. Each of the artists produced sonic ideas examining these themes that frame the politics of listening and technology.

Know more and listen to the sound pieces here.

In 2021, the project received the FICA Public Art Grant and culminated into an artistic intervention – falling through a signal at FICA Project_Space, New Delhi in Aug 2023. The exhibition published an album in the form of a playlist of sound works by 13 artists accompanied with a book: -ool-notes/ Annotations, an album-book edited by Sonam– here

<–ool– associations / 2019-2023>