Ansuman Biswas, BA Hons (Dartington)

Profile

I was born in Calcutta, India and emigrated to London with my parents. I studied Drama at Manchester University and Music at Dartington College of Arts. Since then I’ve developed an international creative practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. My work is hybrid, inter-disciplinary, and inter-cultural – often taking place between science, art and religion, for instance, or between music, dance and visual art, or between Indian and European sensibilities.

Over the last few years my practice has included directing Shakespeare in America, translating Tagore from the Bengali, designing underwater sculptures in the Red Sea, living with wandering minstrels in India, being an ornamental hermit in the English countryside, touring with Björk, surviving blindfolded in an unknown place, travelling with nomadic shamans in the Gobi Desert, playing with Oasis, collaborating with neuroscientists in Arizona, living for a week with nothing but what spectators chose to give me, singing for 24 hours non-stop, organizing grassroots activists in Soweto, meditating in a box for ten days with no food or light, creating a musical in a maximum security prison, bathing strangers, being a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, holding seminars in a Burmese monastery, running a club for women in Hamburg’s red light district, playing with terminally ill children, making a radio telescope sing and dance, being locked in a Gothic tower alone for forty days and nights, flying on a real, live, magic carpet, and stopping time.

I have been a Senior Lecturer at Dartington College of Arts, helping to develop an MA in Arts and Ecology there in association with Schumacher College. From 2013 to 2016 I was Creative Director of the Tagore Centre UK. Between 2017 and 2020 I was a Lecturer at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I am an External Examiner at Westminster University.

I am Co-Chair of the Live Art Development Agency, a Trustee of Longplayer, a thousand-year-long musical composition, and a Director of Arts Catalyst, working between science and art. I have been the Chair of Studio Upstairs, a therapeutic community and Artists’ studio.

I’ve been an Associate Artist at Battersea Arts Centre. I’ve pioneered new models of interdisciplinary collaboration at Hewlett-Packard's research lab in Bangalore and have been artist-in-residence at the National Institute of Medical Research in London. I was part of a ground-breaking study group for the European Space Agency on Cultural Utilization of the International Space Station.

My work as a musician spans many genres, from free improvisation to pop, and from jazz to classical musics from around the world. I’ve worked as composer in theatres around the world including off-Broadway, London’s West End, the Royal National Theatre, and the Royal Ballet. I‘ve been commissioned by the Sonic Arts Network, the English National Opera and Guangdong Modern Dance Company in China, among others. From 2016-17 I was Musical Director at Shakespeare’s Globe.

I have worked with the BBC, Channel Four and MTV and as a percussionist alongside Courtney Pine, Evan Parker, Butch Morris, The London Improvisers Orchestra, John Renbourn, Jerry Dammers, The Specials, Robert Cray, Asian Dub Foundation, Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney, Bjork, Oasis, Cornershop, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, etc. I am also an experienced teacher of music in individual and group contexts.

My theatre composition credits include Life is a Dream at the Donmar Warehouse, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Tempest, and Dr Faustus at the National Theatre, Peer Gynt at The Contact Theatre, Manchester, Beauty Sleeps at The Young Vic, River on Fire at the Lyric Hammersmith, Oedipus Tyrranos, and Othello Music at Battersea Arts Centre, A Yearning at Birmingham Rep, The Seagull, Ion, and Iph… at the Mercury Theatre Colchester, Pericles at Portland Stage Company, Maine, USA, A Tacit Assembly at GMDC, Guangzhou, China, Genesis at Tara Arts, Go Noah Go and Odessa and the Magic Goat at The Little Angel.

As a visual artist I have shown work at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The South London Gallery, The Whitechapel Gallery, the ICA, the Edinburgh Festival, and I have had residencies at the National Institute of Medical Research (London), at the Headlands Centre (San Francisco), at Portsmouth Cathedral, at the Guangdong Modern Dance Company (China), at The National Review of Live Art, (Glasgow), and at NICA (Networking Initiatives in Culture and the Arts, Yangon, Myanmar).

I have undertaken artist’s residencies in Sikkim, Bangalore, Mongolia, Greece, Italy, South Africa, South America, China, California, and throughout the UK.

Underpinning all this diversity is the discipline of vipassana meditation which has informed my commitment to the primacy of listening and the fluidity of identity.

Research

Research Interests:

• Listening
• Improvisation
• Consciousness and Embodiment
• Indian Philosophy

Recent and On-Going Research

My central interest is in the application of the principles of vipassana meditation in diverse contexts.

Solitary contemplation in this ancient form is the heart of my practice and it opens out to a number of broad avenues of research.

Music is an on-going study, especially improvisation as a means to uncover what is beyond conscious awareness. My current primary musical focus is on Indian Classical vocal and percussion.

At the beginning of the pandemic I initiated a series of online events called Infectious Air which explored zoom as medium for public assembly and group improvisation. Just before the global pandemic was officially declared I was engaged in a project with sex workers and theatre makers creating one-on-one performances focusing on the experience of heterosexual women. All close contact was then suddenly curtailed and over the course of subsequent lockdowns I have been engaged in a series of investigations into Social Intimacy with Theatre of Research in Hamburg.

I am currently developing a project at the Horniman Museum called Time Sculptor, an examination and manipulation of time at various scales. The project includes, performances, talks, ceremonies, installation of a permanent sculpture, a book of poems, and other outputs.

Publications

A chapter in “The Live Creature and Ethereal Things: Physics in Culture”

                https://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Creature-Ethereal-Things-Physics/dp/099277764X

‘Vipassana Meditation as an Introspective Theatre’ a chapter in ‘Posthuman Spiritualities in Contemporary Performance - Politics, Ecologies and Perceptions’, Silvia Battista, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Kaputt - Academy of Destruction, review by Mary Paterson http://www.cappnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MPaterson-Kaputt.pdf

‘Deep Ecology and the Threat of Destruction’ in ‘Critical Practice – Artists, Museums, Ethics’, Janet Marstine, Routledge, 2017

‘Sufi Journal’, issue 93, Summer 2017, article on Science and Spirituality

A chapter in ‘On Listening’, ed. Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane, CRiSAP, 2013

‘Letting the Moment Unfold’, in ‘Sufi Journal’, http://sufijournal.org/letting-the-moment-unfold/

‘Pulse’ magazine article on ‘How to Listen’, September 2012,

‘Beacon of Sound’, a film on Longplayer by Kris Rimmer, http://vimeo.com/29102323

‘The Music of What Happens’, a chapter in ‘Music & Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives’, ed. Eric Clarke and David Clarke, Oxford University Press, 2011

Review of Louder than Bombs by Mary Paterson, A-N Magazine, May 2010

‘The Kindness of Strangers’, Sarah Kent, Phillips de Pury Catalogue, April 2010

‘Playing With Words - Live’,  DVD, Gruenrekorder, Germany, 2010

‘Relics’, Ansuman Biswas, DVD, published on-demand by Unbound, Live Art Development Agency, 2009

‘Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology’,  ed. Josephine Berry Slater and Pailine van Mourik Broekman, London, 2009

‘InsideOut – A psyche and its geography’, book and CD curated by Andrew Kotting, Sonic Arts Network 2008

‘Playing With Words – the spoken word in artistic practice’ ed. Cathy Lane, CRiSAP 2008

‘8 Artists Try Not To Talk About Art’, [ space ] 2006

‘Documenting Live’ DVD and book, Live Art Development Agency 2008

‘History in the Present’ by Amna Malik in Ghosting - The Role of the Archive within Contemporary Artist’s Film and Video, Josephine Lanyon and Jane Connarty (Eds.), Picture This Moving Image 2006

Feature in soDa magazine, Switzerland, 2005

‘Well Worth the Weight’, Catriona Black, Sunday Herald 03 April 2005

Zero Gravity – A Cultural User’s Guide, Rob La Frenais and Nicola Triscott (Eds.) Arts Catalyst 2005

Space Travel Guidebook Michiko Tohyama (Ed) Random House Kodansha , Japan 2005

‘In it for the duration’ Paul Glinkowski, A-N Magazine July 2004

‘Changing Skins’ Ansuman Biswas in A Widening Field – journeys in body and imagination, Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay, Dance Books 2004

‘Ex-Centris’ in Live – Art and Performance, Adrian Heathfield (Ed.) Tate Publishing 2004

‘Museum Epidemiology’ by Betti Marenko, Mute magazine, issue 27 Spring 2004

Performing Difference, Artsadmin, 2004

‘British Homeland’ Pratap Rughani and ‘Making Place’ Zayd Minty in A Place Called Home Zayd Minty (Ed.) One, Cape Town, South Africa 2004

Freefall – Arts Council England International Artists’ Fellowships ACE 2004

Artist’s pages, Ansuman Biswas in When In Rome I Amanda Francis and Raimi Gbadamosi (Eds.), Galleria Olakunle Galleria/Lewisham Art House Gallery 2003

Artist’s pages, Ansuman Biswas in When In Rome III Raimi Gbadamosi (Ed) Castlefield Gallery 2004

‘Big Pile of Proof’ Ansuman Biswas in careers un-ltd Jonathan Robinson and Carmel McConnell, Pearson Education 2003

‘id’ Ansuman Biswas in Nanoscopic Culture, Miria Swain and Simon Gould (Eds.), National Institute of Medical Research, 2003

‘Solitude – The Hermit Project’ by Anna Douglas, Follies Journal, no.3, 2003

‘Folly’ Ansuman Biswas, Follies Journal, no.3, 2003

‘Ansuman Biswas – Amplified Universe’ Krystina Sibley, Planet magazine, no. 2, Fall 2002

Improvisers Jo Fell, Bruce’s Fingers 2002

Crafting Space Smart Project Space, Amsterdam 2002

‘Of Art, Science and Mysteries’, Bharat Kumar, The Hindu, December 2001

‘At an Ashram Near You: His Aura’, Chloe Veltman, Wired magazine, December 2001

‘Stars In Their Eyes’ Judith Palmer, The Sunday Review Magazine, with The Independent on Sunday, 11 November 2001

‘The Gateway Project’ Harry Roche in Artweek, San Jose, California, Issue 6 Vol. 32, June 2001

‘Art and The New’ Ansuman Biswas in Future Art Symposia, Stan’s Café, 2001

‘Self/Portrait’ in sciart 2000, Bergit Arends and Lucy Shanahan (Eds.), Wellcome Trust Publishing Department

things not worth keeping, cris cheek and Kirsten Lavers (Eds.), Object Books 2000

‘El Sonido natura del jazz’ in El Tiempo, Bogota, Colombia, 16th Sept 2000

‘self/portrait’ in Research in Process, Artsadmin 2000

‘Black Magic’, Ansuman Biswas in Whose Heritage – The Impact on Cultural Diversity on Britain’s Living Heritage, Arts Council of England 2000

Photo Feature, Tania Guha, Time Out November 25^th – December 2^nd 1998

‘Oedipus Tyrranos’ Jane Edwardes July 1998

‘The Insider’ Shrabani Basu, Sunday Magazine 12 – 18 April 1998

Interview on The Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 23^rd March 1998

Photo Feature, page 10, The Guardian, March 23^rd 1998

Full page feature, Kate Ginn Daily Mail, 17^th March 1998

Cat Ansuman Biswas, Arts Catalyst, 1998

‘The Compiler’, Rob Young, in The Wire magazine, issue 170, April 1998

‘Particle Accelerator’, Rob Young in The Wire magazine, issue 165, Nov 1997

‘The Art of Observation’, Rena Bhandari in The Asian Age 25^th Oct 1997

 ‘Wonderous Stories’, Jiro Ajaife Don’t Tell It magazine, no. 11Mar/Apr 1996

Photo feature in Daily Express, Trinidad & Tobago, Nov 13^th 1995

‘A Few Words about Ansuman’ Ravishankar Bol, Protidin, Calcutta, India, January 1995

Photo feature, La Liberté, July 1995

Photo Feature, Berliner Zeitung, July 1995