Isuru
Kumarasinghe

As a sound artist living and working in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Isuru Kumarasinghe has spent many years exploring sound through a range of musical and sonic expressions. From his participation in a variety of bands to delving into recording techniques and electroacoustic composition, his work is shaped by a curiosity for the dynamics of sonic materiality as well as by a desire to foster broader public awareness, which includes being an active member of the Musicmatters Collective. Central to his unique practice is an interest in sound as an immersive and potentially transformative experience. This includes a pronounced interest in resonance, which finds expression in his sound installation Gilunu: I became one with you, presented at CTM in 2023. Extending from an earlier version, the work is based on recordings the artist made of himself walking slowly in a space while vocalizing and playing the esraj, a stringed instrument found throughout South Asia. Searching for active resonances within the room, Kumarasinghe brings attention to the inherent acoustic qualities of an environment, listening for moments of shimmering vibration. As the artist highlights, sound is a living entity whose movements through a given architecture impact onto its tonality and duration, its textures and rhythms. Importantly, during the process of sounding and resounding the space, Kumarasinghe arranges microphones to capture the sound and play it back through a vibration speaker installed under two self-constructed resonator instruments; in this way, he builds up a layer of live sound that travels through the space to resonate the instruments whose sounds contribute to the emerging soundscape. Working with recordings of this process, Gilunu: I became one with you was presented as a live performance installation at Kunstquartier Bethanien; in a space filled with deep blue light, audiences were immersed in a shimmering tone of frequency. Over time, Kumarasinghe began to perform live, adding sounds in an attempt to bring forth a localized, resonant field of sound. Gilunu: I became one with you is a contemplative work, accenting sound as a transportive experience, one that can keep us close to the present, to the time and space of the moment. This includes inviting audiences to renew a deeper feeling for their own physical presence, and how we might gain a richer sensitivity for the ways in which our bodies are participant within a greater material ecology.

Isuru Kumarasinghe is a deep listener, and his work follows sound as it lives and breathes in the world. Attuning to its ever-nuanced frequencies, he crafts sonic experiences that tether us to the vibrational earth while transporting us to new, reverberant heights. These are material, spiritual journeys, and they come to accent sound as ceremonial, as something that connects, gifting us with the capacity to sense the invisible, sacred continuum of the living. In the video work Echoes of Listening: Being With (2021), produced in collaboration with the dancer Sara Mikolai, we encounter a meditative scene, with the two artists appearing beside a flowing stream that cascades over voluminous, smooth boulders. Slowing moving along the hard surfaces of the boulders, the sounds of water interspersed with minimal electric guitar envelop the performers as they lie on the rocks, touching and feeling the surfaces, placing their bodies close to the flowing water. The work affords a delicate glimpse into the capacity of listening to enable ways of being-with the natural world, giving onto a profound form of attunement. Kumarasinghe’s practice, deeply informed by listening and the attentional work it conducts, is a sensitive craft; it carries us into poetic dimensions, directing us to the ineffable.

Brandon LaBelle