Artist Talk: Creating between Cultures

This Artist Talk will be a conversation with between Gowri Jayakumar / Pulpy Shilpy from Pune/India, who currently participates in a Border Movement residency in Berlin, and Ramsha Shakeel, who moved from Pakistan to Canada and currently lives in Berlin. We want to learn about their respective (and different) artistic practices and their creative paths. Pulpy Shilpy puts the tags „Cyborg Sex Funk“ to her pop sounds; Ramsha Shakeel is an experimental musician and interdisciplinary artist. A particular angle of the conversation will be their navigation between South Asian and Western musical traditions and also cultural backgrounds and audiences, and how moving and migrating between different sound and cultural worlds impacts their creative path.

Pulpy Shilpy: Soundcloud
Pulpy Shilpy is the electronic avatar of Pune-based singer/songwriter Gowri Jayakumar, who also fronted freak funk quartet Run Pussy Run. With her roots in soul, jazz and wordplay, she is known for her unique and versatile methods of storytelling and performance. Gowri was a journalist for seven years (2006-2012) after which she studied music for ten months at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music. She began playing guitar at the age of 15, and that’s how it all began. Pulpy Shilpy is currently engaged in an artist residency with Border Movement in Berlin.

Ramsha Shakeel: Bandcamp, Soundcloud
Self-taught producer and multi-instrumentalist Ramsha Shakeel has spent her career crafting ambient drones that approximate the celestial. Having also created crossdisciplinary works intersecting experimental music, interactive art and new media, her sound inspires visions of bright constellations and otherworldly beams of light. On her LP’s Daastanemarg and Veils, she renders space’s boundless grandeur and freezing darkness equally, invoking distortion, swirling atmospherics and more. Unless you have Elon Musk on speed dial, music like Ramsha’s remains one of the best ways to imagine a trip to Mars.

The conversation will be moderated by a percussionist, composer, producer & curator Renu Hossain.
RENU (Renu Hossain) is a British-Bengali, Berlin and London based artist. She is a composer, producer, tabla-player, percussionist and curator. Originally a percussionist for – Grace Jones, State of Bengal, Fun_da_mental, MIKA, Alabama 3 and Tunde Jegede.

This talk is organized in collaboration with Border Movement (merging electronic music from South Asia and Germany) and NOW / Night School (organizing talks and concerts for/with female identifying, trans and non-binary inclusive, queer, POC activists, experts and artists in the field of music).