Firat Yildiz
bangaloREsident@ISRO

Firat Yildiz is an electronic music artist, composer and DJ, based in Pforzheim. Besides engaging in his sound practice, Yildiz creates soundscapes for performance, film and multimedia installations in collaboration with other artists. His sonic research often manifests in sound meditations, listening sessions and also dance music. A son of two Turkish migrants from southeast Anatolia, Yildiz’s upbringing is marked by living between two separate coded cultures with diverse origins. Torn between different religions and distinct traditions, his research responds to questions of identity and origins, oppression, faith and positive change.

The main research during his bangaloREsidency at the Indian Sonic Research Organisation is to explore the carpet as an interface for sonic and material storytelling, as a space for communion and hospitality, a relic of times marked by a clash of cultures in search of new common expressions.

Carpets are a living testament of migrating cultural practices and material knowledge moving through different geographies. Their algorithmic patterns are an ancient technology, preserving and transmitting memories and stories. In today’s globalised societies, everyone contributes their individual background to a multicultural social fabric, in virtual or physical space. Electronic communication and new technologies escalate this cultural exchange in a restless digital nomadism, accelerating and dissolving cultural boundaries while giving birth to myriads of hybrid cultural expressions

Most recently, Yildiz collaborated with scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour on a series of experimental soundscapes using scientific audio data. He composed soundtracks for performances such as »My Burden is My Soulmate« by Leman Daricioglu (2022), »Thermal Dynamics« by Anjana Berger (2020) or for the virtual performance »Der Massenmensch« by Lena Hetzel and Janina Au (2021). He also contributed sound works for the solo exhibition »Immaterial« of 4E collective at Emma Kreativ Zentrum in Pforzheim and for Ornamenta’s pre-triennial programme at a church in Lienzingen with the media artist Özgur Kar (2021).