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Imagine you’re in a museum: What do you hear?
Bhavisha Panchia
Artwork 2020
Installation photograph from the ‘Model’ exhibition in A4’s Reading Room. Bhavisha Panchia sound installation 'Imagine you're in a museum: What do you hear?' consists of four chairs with headphones.
Artwork: Bhavisha Panchia, Imagine you’re in a museum: What do you hear? (2020). Sound. 33 min. Courtesy of the artist.
Artist Bhavisha Panchia Title Imagine you're in a museum: What do you hear? Date 2020 Materials Sound Dimensions 33 min Credit Courtesy of the artist

Panchia’s Imagine You are In a Museum: What do you hear? is an audio collage of musical tracks, interviews, and ambient sounds. Produced as a curatorial response to the impact of colonialism on cultural production, we hear muffled voices, bodies moving and robotic readings of empirical data. Panchia, researching the politics of how we hear, who is heard, and, conversely, who and what is missing from the soundscape begins Imagine You are In a Museum: What do you hear? by describing the concept of phonomnesis – the sensation of remembering or imagining sound. Her question, “What do you hear?” considers the museum’s involvement in colonial history. What would you hear, were you to explore alternative soundscapes or adopt new ways of listening?

b.1985, Durban; works in Johannesburg.

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