We are a Geology-Art-Sound research collective based in Iraq, France and the UK. Between us we are currently exploring ‘thinking through mud’ in consideration of shifting ideas around human and more-than-human, organic and inorganic, intra-action.
“My current research is focused on the stratigraphy and climate change record of the Mesopotamian marshland and certain archaeological sites, during the Quaternary Period, with a special interest in moving beyond specific scientific paradigms to philosophical enquiry.”
“I create work that connects with the senses, bringing the body into conversation with the earth, exploring traces through time, often catching people unawares and interrupting familiar journeys. In my work digital media jostle with tactile materials and bodies, so that the work can take a variety of forms including writing, walking, moving image, voice, site-specific installation, and participatory performance.”
Shaima Al-sitrawi
“This work is a reflection of the thoughts and memories which I have been living with most of my adult life after living through war in Iraq in 1990 and coming to the UK seeking asylum with my family as a teenager. Iraq never left my mind and my only way of expressing this past is through art. Drawing, writing and singing, provide ways for me to visit my memories of Iraq. Taking part in this mud project made me realise how much I am connected to the Iraqi soil and earth, how the sense of homeland is so important to me and to my existence. Mud contains roots of things and so I am connected to my roots through Iraqi mud.”
“I am interested in how our perception of being in, knowing and belonging to the world affects our ecological awareness and thinking. In my multi-disciplinary practice I approach environmental changes through research, collaboration and deep connections with the land, its people and its materials.”
“Through arts research I am engaging in this rethinking of the political in terms of the geosphere-biosphere and realising the potentiality of contemporary art as naturally transdisciplinary and proto-politically affective.“
“My work considers the organic interactivity of things, as made perceptible and appreciated through sound. I primarily use field recording, improvisation, and writing as sites of potential encounter, alongside ideas of kin-making and resistance as building blocks towards a situated listening practice.”
“As a visual artist I explore the landscape and its memories driven by the impact and transitions humans have on the places they live in. I seek out locations that are atmospheric yet disquieting, with a shifting dialogue between the past, present and future. This enables me to explore landscape as a place of speculative narratives, creating new terrains and revealing unseen topographies.”
Farah Mulla is an artist based in Mumbai. Her artwork explores the varied possibilities of human experience in relation to time, space, the visual and the aural. Mulla’s background in science is not only reflected in her approach to her practice but also in her experimentation with different media – from installations to sound recordings. Excited by the varied possibilities of the listening experience her work often tries to bring the viewers attention to the aural through multiple modes of perception.
“I am a sound artist/composer based in Cambridge, UK. Born and raised in rural southern Illinois, USA, I have lived in the UK for the past 19 years. I have a BA in Sonic Arts from Middlesex University (2007), and MAs in Sound Art (LCC 2010), and Fine Art (Cambridge School of Art 2015). I was a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre from 2016-2021.
My artistic practice always engaged with visual embodiments of my sound composition, for example building installations to play/perform them in, but since 2019 I made the decision to focus solely on sound composition. My compositions incorporate field recordings I have made over the years, with incidental/experimental music I compose. Some of these have found their home in experimental films by visual artists like Paul Kindersley and Ian Giles.”
Browse our accumulating research particles at MUD Archive
A Journey through Voice and Vessel 