Hamza Beg

MARK OF MY DEPARTURE

All work on my profile is orbiting this piece right here

These are the opening liner notes for MOMD. There are two images. They both share the same style; a black roti-textured background with bright pink text. On the first image, the text cascades down and reads ‘mark of my departure’ with each word in a different font. In the middle, across the cascade are the letters MOMD emblazoned large.

The second image has the same large MOMD across the middle. Above it is the track list. Which reads as follows:

mark one: water
mark two: melanogenesis
mark three: in the bazaar
mark four: ilford lane
mark five: be you

Underneath is a body of text that reads as follows:

MOMD produced, arranged and entirely composed by Allah SWT

features include Nusrat and company, the Chapparrals, whoever recorded that tabla loop, some random heads, Mufti Menk and that hilarious kid, Hamza Mohammed Beg and everyone who has ever interacted with us.

In the name of Allah the gracious and the merciful

I am greeted at the archway of my own work, stepping into it for the first time, hearing my voice drowned in the divine. All voices are dripping with it.

MOMD is a parting letter but I do not know to whom nor do I know where I am leaving to.

Those whom you guide none can misguide and those whom you misguide none can guide.

All of my research, writing and creative work for this program is trying to understand and expand on this that tumbled out of me >>>>>

Intro

Hey, I’m Hamza welcome to my studio. I’m a self-taught multimedia artist and researcher. I’m an able-bodied male-conditioned, postcolonial person. My work is informed by continuous conversations with the people I love as much as any reading, listening and observing.

I’m using this residency to resume an investigation I started some time ago (before getting distracted by another project). Mark of My Departure (MOMD) is preoccupied with the South Asian diasporic experience. The centerpiece of the work is a 7 minute visual collage set to an original composition.

I will use the time afforded to me in the residency to continue the collection and tessellation of related postcolonial images and ideas. I am aiming to produce a supporting body of work so that the video is held within an expanded context.

When you step into my studio, you should smell my aunties homemade garam masala slowly infusing into fried onions on the stovetop. Poke around the work you find and if you have any questions or comments do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section.

Sending love,

Hamza

since we here no innocence

continuing to sketch > < continuing to sketch

visible roots left in the ground > < follow up for the tree

tabla tabla strings and vocals >

a call to recent studies >

video description: set to another Lollywood classic, this short clip splits the screen into two separate panels. Each one follows the camera movement from dead roots laid in the grass upward to a living tree and then up again to the blue sky – the movement is from grey decay to lush green and blue life. As the intro to the song finishes and the first vocal is about to drop in, the image pauses for a brief moment…two tabla-like images appear side to side. Both are rotating circles with an inner circle of a blackened wood texture, made to appear like the syahi, the central point of the tabla skin. Both rotating circles give the sense of vinyl records being played, with the outer ring on both circles featuring two distinct family images. One is of my two grandfathers sternly sizing each other up. The other is of my grandmother and her best friend sizing up the camera. As the song continues and fades out, the images are taken away by a burning line across the screen.

Michael Landy, another artist from Ilford

Michael Landy

A British conceptual and installation artist born in Ilford.

Landy is best known for Break Down, a performance piece where he categorically destroyed all of his possessions in a disused C&A on Oxford St. It has been widely read as a critique of consumerism, following on from early work of his that overtly criticises a growing consumerist ethic. I think the work contains an inner dimension that allows for a deep denial of materiality (not just material), making it spiritual and ascetic. The work was visceral and emotional for Landy.

This image is a photograph of Michael Landy's installation work 'Break Down' from 2001. It shows a group of people categorising the artists items and putting them on a production line where they will eventually be destroyed.

After ‘Break Down’ he took a hiatus from making art before returning with Semi-detached. The latter is a lesser known work of his but I find it conceptually important that after destroying all of his possessions that he felt the need to recreate his home. This house is such a ubiquitous image in Ilford and witnessing it in the gallery space gives me mixed feelings. In some ways, the work seems to be a direct discussion about the area, home and Landy’s personal history. Mobilising the aesthetic feels representative. The work engages in a kind of elevation of normality. An edification of all of the processes of house-building: window fitting, door framing, coving, roofing etc. While obviously not unique to Ilford, this building is a complete replica that brings Ilford into the gallery space and it makes the address in Ilford another site of the work.

This image is a photograph of Michael Landy's artwork 'Semi-detached' at Tate Britain in 2004. The work is an exact replica of his father's home in Ilford. It is a life-size semi-detached house with a typical 1970s pebble-dash exterior, white bay windows and a white door with brass handle and knocker. The welcome invites the viewer and marks the threshold of interaction.

In other ways, the work misses an opportunity to have a discussion about how dynamic Ilford is as an area. The focus is on a frozen moment in the artists history and does not engage more widely in the creation of place. The neighbours, the local supermarket, the high street, the bus stop, the local park. These aspects of home-place-making are all conspicuously absent from the work.

Anyway, the work is actually all about Landy’s dad who was confined to the house after a mining accident in 1976. It’s about his father’s incapacitation and a reflection of working class conditions in 1970s Britain. So of course, it isn’t about Ilford at all neither elevating its normality nor missing its dynamism but keeping a focus on the father-figure. In some ways, Landy’s work is about ancestry and those who have come before. The excerpt from a Guardian interview with the artist below strings together the relationship between Break Down and Semi-detatchced.

“One object that Landy didn’t destroy until right at the end, which went round and round the conveyor like an unclaimed suitcase, was a big old sheepskin jacket – his dad’s. “My mother had bought it on credit just before he had his industrial accident. After that, it became too heavy for him to wear any more. She still had to pay it off. In a sense, this sheepskin coat became him, travelling around on this yellow tray…Landy later made a significant work about his dad, Semi-detached, in which a precise replica of his parents’ Ilford semi was erected in Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries in 2004. It was the sort of emotionally loaded artwork he couldn’t have imagined making before Break Down. “I was interested in my dad’s value as a human being. What’s rubbish? What’s a weed? Why is my dad a total wreck case? That’s what preoccupies me.””

(( THIS WAS A GREAT REVIEW OF ANOTHER SHOW OF HIS ))

Most recently Landy has been making work about Essex, the county of his and my own birth. Reviled as the capital of countries nouveau-riche, Landy documents the nations view of Essex in his 2021 exhibition Welcome to Essex at the Firstsite Gallery in Colchester. His archive Essexism turns the mirror on a liberal-metropolitan elite who have written about the rise of Essex as a kind of phenomenon. It shows them as frightened of the emergence of a new kind of middle class who do not seek the sanctified sophistication of upper-crust England but use their wealth to adorn themselves while otherwise staying authentic in speech, action and style. While the classism is a clear issue tackled in the work so is the accompanying misogyny.

The construction of the ‘Essex girl’ has been used as a way to demonise young women and label them ‘stupid’ for seeking different kinds of mobility. In the accompanying documentary, Landy meets superstar businesswoman, Amy Childs, who it turns out is his first cousin once removed. He makes a point about their similarity and even uses products of hers in his exhibition as part of the archive.

The work feels authentic, political and as described by Landy himself iconoclastic. I appreciate that he includes his mother in the documentary work, that he explores spaces he knew as a child and that he admits how ignorant he was about Essex throughout most of his life. I feel inspired by how genuine he seems and through reading about his life and work I take away the following lesson:

bringing the family into the frame, forgoing the material, seeking something of home,

i can flow with the feeling of the water

this work is a quick sketch >

it’s a rough work based on recent research >

< it also uses previous studies

the footage is taken from one mountain spring in the Harz >

suddenly any place where the water flows is a place I can imbibe with a sense of home/belonging >

bodies of water as liminal spots of belonging >

this work draws its title from lyrics in Mark of my Departure >

it is meant tobe funny >

video description: set to a classic Lollywood tune this video juxtaposes different images of flowing water in different shaped frames. The frames are sometimes overlapping, sometimes slowly elongating and are synchronised to reflect moments in the musical journey. The water is flowing from a small stream across grey-brown rocks flanked by some greenery and soft moss. The water is clear and the flow is strong.

As the beat drops and the tabla comes into full swing, two circular images are seen rotating on the screen. The two images are in the same style and both created in the same way. On the left is an image of my grandfather, reading a newspaper, looking away from the camera. His image is framed by a circular photograph of a chopped tree trunk. Using the same method, the image on the right has the chopped tree trunk frame with an image of my father and his brothers in it, all sporting the wild 1970s style of facial and head hair. The two images rotate continuously in the style of old vinyl before slowly fading out.

the tabla and dislocation pt. 3

more studies in chopping the tabla

An old circular photograph shows two stern, old brown men, in their 50s, both wearing glasses sizing each other up. Both are suited looking smart and they are both grandfathers of the artist. Obscuring the centre of the image is a perfect circle. It is filled with the texture of a chopped tree trunk but blackened to approximate the Syahi, the centerpoint of the tabla.

these are my two grandfathers surveying each other

This circular photograph contains the image of two 'almost smiling' women, looking softly at the camera with a lightness but strength of purpose. It is the artists grandmother and her best friend. Obscuring the center of the image is a circle filled with the texture of a chopped texture but blackened to approximate the Syahi, the centerpoint of the tabla.

my grandmother and her best friend

MADE THE SYAHI

Using the image of the chopped down tree stumps, I fashioned the syahi for these tabla’d images, making the symbol of dislocation the central point of attention. Reversing the process from the previous studies, trying to be more direct in the tabla reference and combing through the family pictures. This process has reminded me that so much of this work is about building an archive for/of the family that reconnects the ancestral lineage severed by dislocation.

the tabla and dislocation pt. 2

studies in chopping up the tabla

The top face of a tree stump is photographed from above. At its centre is a perfectly round image of my grandfather reading a newspaper. The round image has its own outer ring of a separate darker brown trunk.

A perfectly round image of my grandfather with a ringed frame of a chopped tree trunk. This image is taken from the previous image and made larger to expose some details. These include the wooden wall of his house, the newspaper he is engrossed in and the sepia tint of his spectacles.

Another tree stump holds another perfectly round family photo. This tree stump has greying-green moss at its sides and a little on its cut trunk. The image at the centre is of my father and his three brothers. Their image is framed by another chopped tree trunk that is brighter and more yellow in colour.

A perfectly round image of my father and his brothers with a ringed frame of a chopped tree trunk. This image is taken from the previous image and made larger to expose some details. These include the wicked afro of my uncle, the fullness of three Pakistani moustaches and the intimacy of their holding each other.

studies in chopping up the tabla

these studies are produced by pushing family photos into images of chopped trees < these trees are located in the Harz Mountains in Germany where the bark beetle has destroyed local forests < amongst the decay and disease wild flowers and grasses < growback >

< the bark beetle is a kind of predatory invader to the forest < “nature” has its own forms of violent destruction < reoccupation of habitat < re-inscription of its role < colonialism >

< normally a tree would be able to ward off the beetle by producing its own resin < but increased heat and drought have weakened this defense < many trees are dying < many trees are being chopped down < chopping >

< roots in the ground remain as the wood is chopped and moved elsewhere> < chopping >

< the stump is a sign of this dislocation < a mark of my departure >

< the stump becomes the image of the tabla face < except it misses the syahi < the syahi is the blackened tuning paste in the center of the drum < the syahi is the pupil of the eye > < in the iris >

< in the iris < my father and his brothers < my grandfather alone < the generational split that I never knew < their relationship with the looking lens < the brothers facing the eye of the camera < the father lost in his work < neither looking at each other < both brothers and father >

< in my eyes >

< in my eyes < as I walk>

< at the rhythm and pace of a tabla>

< through the dying forest < and mystifying growback >

the tabla and dislocation

…the first musical instrument I remember touching was

[ the tabla in my uncle’s home ]

this pair of beating eyes, bringing life
the touch of taut skin
flitting
flatting
frequencies
skimming
skipping
sentences of sound
there is no more desperate path out
                                                                                                     _{(of dislocation out)}
than my divine desire to crop my fingers
fold them into pegs
to fling and to follow
to play play play

Un-tabla’d as I am, I dedicate my sound to learning about the music in me that already knows the rhythm of the tabla. This is the first section of Mark of My Departure. Speaking over the tabla loop here felt liberating. The image of the tabla is currently in my mind and everywhere around me all the time.

if you got the rhythm I can go with precision
i can flow with the feeling of the water
i can drop unexpected, drop like the t’s in the native speech it’s sorta
sorta slick with these thick lips flip syllables to spit am from L D N
but you can find me in the kiez by canal in the sun, in the rain, in the hail my friend
all praise due
all praise due
all praise due Allah
if i wanna manifest a blessing, my head be pressing the musallah

this language I hate it the colonisers tongue – not very fun
this language I love it, it’s the only one – well I guess that’s done

i can flow with the feeling of the water
cut through the border
what you gonna do with this bricks and mortar when the sea-levels rise
hoarder
that’s me though too much stuff
who come rough round the edges and bluffs
i can float in the cushioning clouds, pushing them bounds
kush and a crown