Presentation: Electronic India

Paul Purgas (one half of Emptyset) will present a talk and listening event exploring the history of India’s first electronic music studio, founded in October 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. The studio operated with a utopian avant-garde set of principles that defined a newly independent India, revealing overlapping narratives of international Modernism and Cold War geopolitics, alongside wider technological ambitions to shape a post-colonial sonic imaginary. Purgas will play excerpts from a collection of early reel-to-reel electronic music recordings uncovered from the studio.