| PROJECTS | sumuganATprotonmailDOTcom | slowtheory.org | fugitive-radio.net | ||
Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist, researcher and writer whose interests include: music, minority politics, activist media, artist infrastructures and more-than-human rights. His artistic research project fugitive radio proposes that “post-internet” experimental radio is a counter culture to the visuality of platform capitalism. It develops live collectively-realised modes of “performance-radio” alongside a monthly podcast, “fugitive frequency”, zines and texts. fugitive radio was initiated in Helsinki in partnership with Pixelache and with support from the Kone Foundation (2020–21). It participated in documenta fifteen (2022) curated by Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa as part of lumbung radio. Sumugan was a Community & Education resident in Singapore Art Museum’s SAM Residencies, Cycle 2 (1 April–29 June 2024), where he invented the Bureau of Race Neutrality as a participatory artwork, collective think tank and collaborative consultancy that seeks to divest from race as a category of difference. In February 2024, Sumugan co-hosted a ten-day intensive music production "bootcamp", Dham Dham Riddim at DreamSpace Academy, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Working in collaboration with artist Lucinda Dayhew and with support from Goethe-Institut, they developed a program that progressed from recording sounds in the environment to producing an original song. The results were released as a mini-album on Bandcamp. Sumugan earned a doctorate from the Transforming Cultures research centre at the University of Technology Sydney (2014). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for English and American Studies (Cultural Studies), University of Potsdam (2016) supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), investigating social movements mobilising in the wake of COP21 Paris, 2015. Sumugan was a fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie, 2022-23. He has received grants from Goethe-Institut (2023), Australia Council for the Arts Individual Projects (2022), Kone Foundation, Finland (2021, 2020), Create New South Wales 360 Visions virtual reality development program (2017), Australia Council for the Arts Literature (2014), Australia Council for the Arts Emerging and Experimental Arts (2013) and Australia Council for the Arts Music Board (2008, 2005) among others. He was awarded a Saari International Artist Residency, Finland in September–October 2021 and was the Australia Council for the Arts resident at Heslinki International Artist Programme (HIAP), February–May 2022. With the artist and writer Tessa Zettel he co-founded The T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society during a two month residency at the Nida Art Colony to develop a work for its 2018 Inter-format Symposium “On Rites and Terrabytes.” This follows on from their multispecies urban/artistic research project, Plan Bienen. He was selected to participate in the Onassis AiR collaborative research residency, School of Infinite Rehearsals, Movement I, Athens, September–October 2020. In July 2022 he participated in the third Digital Naturalism Conference (Dinacon) hosted by the grassroots peace-building and social enterprise organisation DreamSpace Academy in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. In November 2018 he took part in the inaugural international artists residency at Insituto Procomun LABxS Santos, Brazil. Here he initiated Lunch Against Work: Almoço Contra o Trabalho, a social kitchen/laboratory for developing knowledge about plants, poverty, foraging and food systems. Late in 2014 he undertook a two month residency with the Faculty of Arts, University of Peradeniya, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts Literature (2014) and Arts NSW (2014). Here he initiated a critical writing and micro-publishing project, Theoretically Tamil. Sumugan's published writing on art and culture are collected at slowtheory.org. Academic Publications: “Alex & I: Narrative and network resistance.” Social Identities, August 2018. [PDF 1.1MB] Select Arts & CulturePublications:
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