This is a post by Nakul Krishnamurthy

CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK (FOR THEMSELVES)? 

INTRODUCTION TO THE ART WORK
This work is a collection of sounds recorded from four of the many different surroundings where the economically underprivileged find shelter to sleep at night in Chennai, India. The surroundings are

1. The Marina Beach
   
2. Koyambedu Bus Station
   
3. Pavement at Vadapalani
   
4. Chennai Central Railway Station
   

The name is a reference to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s article ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, which presents the problems of the Western academics investigating a different culture based on “universal” concepts, which are defined by the West. Hence, she argues, the subaltern rarely enter the political and academic discourses of the West.
The artist understands his inability to represent this segment of the subaltern as he does not belong to this community, but rather merely takes up the role of a mediator between the privileged creators and connoisseurs of high art and the Other, in an attempt to make their voice heard. 

This post is by Diploma 2 student at KMMC Sukanyan Sunthareswaran: Soundscape - Poverty In Chennai - A Street Tailor: 

This soundscape has been recorded on a street in Chennai, India on 18th of November 2015. This audio is about a street tailor who walks on the street everyday with his portable sewing machine looking for people to bring him clothes to saw. When he was walking on the street with his machine, with his permission I have followed him and got this fabulous sound recording. Once he got called by a woman to repair some of her cloths. When he was sewing that cloth the sound was more interesting as you can see from the recording. When I was going with him he started enquiring about me and my family.

 

This post is by Diploma 2 student at KMMC Sukanyan Sunthareswaran:

This post is by Diploma 2 student at KMMC Sukanyan Sunthareswaran:
Soundscaping- After Chennai Flood 2015:

This recording has been made after the heavy flood that happened in Chennai in November 2015. I got this recording from the surroundings of my house in Madipakkam. Due to the flood, the entire Chennai was in water. There was a lake near my house. That got filled and water came into our houses. So I thought I would be interesting to capture the sound of flowing water in the streets and lake and the sound of water dripping and bullfrogs crying in my house compound. I recorded this soundscape at 2 am in the morning. One interesting thing was that when I was recording at the lakeside with my MacBook, headphones, microphones and etc. a police patrol vehicle came near us. Few police men came out of he van and started to chase me out of that place. Then somehow I convinced them to do the rest of the recording. I started the recording from the lake and walked till my house. In the recording there will be frogs creeping, dogs chasing a mouse on the street, water flowing in the street, vehicle pass by, fishes jumping in the water accumulated in my house compound, and other sounds.

Chennai@Midnight

Chennai@Night Time is an experimental Sound Art piece aimed to understand the workings of Night time life on a normal weekday in Chennai. Chennai, despite being a metropolitan city in India, is known to sleep early and hence the composer decided to drive to some of the places in Chennai where he could achieve sound samples of an apparently “sleeping” city. Characteristics sound of night time Chennai include sparse traffic, Ice Cream vendors with there occasional bells, sporadic hubs of people and traffic where food is sold or some shops are open to sell cold drinks or cigarettes; 24 hour takeaway outlets that always have delivery men who talk amongst themselves as they perform their night shift jobs. Finally, this experiment made way for an excursion into the vast expanse of Marina Beach where the homeless and destitute sleep in the open beach at night and there are hardly any sounds except an occasional dog barking or someone snoring. The sea shows its true form in this quietness as the lapping of the waves is heard even 1 km away from the sea. This Marina Beach clip has been superimposed with the rest of the sounds of Chennai in order to reiterate that Chennai is a coastal city and that nature is never far away from all the urbanization. The places that were visited in order were as follows

§  Ice Cream Vendor – Subburayan Nagar, Kodambakkam

§  Movenpick Ice Cream Parlour  - Nungambakkam

§  Dawn n Dusk – Khader Nawaz Khan Road, Nungambakkam

§  Sorroundings near Buhari Hotel – Egmore

§  Beach Road and the Beach itself - Marina Beach

Ice Cream @ Midnight

Ice Creams in Chennai are a welcome treat and the sound of the ice cream hawker trolley bell is a welcome sound for the common man. At midnight however, their supply runs out and one can only procure ice creams from the head office in every area where all these trolleys finally park themselves at the end of a night’s work. One such ice cream man was interviewed by us and was told to go to the office to get the said ice cream. He was enamoured by the audio equipment and the interaction of the layman with advanced audio equipment - something that does not seem out of the ordinary to music students - is being explored in the is video. Oh yes, and we got some orange ice cream on the side! :)

The Cottar

Well, I found students getting tired, confident to do well in the KM annual day and opera scenes very much interesting. They were working hard and they wanted to impress the audience, guests, and achieve success. Then I thought, I could record some of their talk during/after their rehearsal. So, I found different sets of people with different emotions. Some of the students really wanted to finish off the events, some wanted to gain the fame and meanwhile some students were enjoying the rehearsals. I got to capture most of the students’ reaction about the KM annual function event rehearsals and I also captured the sounds of labourers’ conversation during a house construction which’s just opposite to the college. Everything I found were two different types of labourers and their dedication to work. The labourers’ during the house construction were having fun conversation and enjoying the work where I captured a bit of their conversation and a scratch sound which came out when labourers were trying to mix the cement and concrete. The labourers in the college campus have different reaction to the work where I could capture their rehearsals and the talk about the rehearsals. 

Sounds Inside and Outside KM Music Conservatory

KM Music Conservatory is surrounded by different sounds, so I went around the conservatory to capture sounds and most interesting one I have found is the KM choir singing “Mozart’s Requiem- Lacrimosa” inside KM and the heavy machinery sounds behind the conservatory. I was watching a dramatic movie based on World War II named "Fury" a day before the sound walk, so these sounds gave me a cinematic effect of a war and it was quite terrifying to listen to the machinery sounds as I could relate them to the sonic effect of heavy ammunitions in the war field.