namak nazar
namak
nazar
“prophets heal the desert with it and those who look back to receive the gaze of the other are turned into pillars of it. it is disobedient.”
Namak Nazar is an aural sculpture that tells the story of an etheric element: ‘So’, a particle of salt that spells the doom of climate change and offers redemption by looking inward. Its palindromic gaze, its evil eye.
Taking the form of a pillar of salt, wedged between the underworld and the realms above, with trumpet speakers that emerge from it like desert blossoms, Namak Nazar reflects on salt lines: markers of a world that is becoming increasingly saline as its waters evaporate.
The poetry combines science and myth to evoke salts’ sensual materiality, and tells its story, as a starter of revolutions to a container for nuclear waste. The soundscape comprises percussion instruments made with salt and songs recorded in the Rann of Kutch, the desert on the border of India and Pakistan. Just as the utility pole is used to communicate messages over long distances, Namak Nazar sends signals that transmit between deserts, pointing at the dying fish at the Salton Sea, and becomes a carrier of prayer, warding off evil, connecting the past to the future, the sea to the desert, the south to the north.
Such poles, harbingers of techno-accelerationism, are erected across our landscapes. Like salt, their doing is their undoing: they preserve, and they corrode. What is the threat, and what sustains us? The outer and the inner blur, the periphery and the center dissolve.
Quiet your mind, let salt wash over you to listen to Namak Nazar, it is listening to you too.
namak nazar was commissioned and produced by Desert Biennale Foundation for DesertX 2023.
Namak Nazar are salt conspiracies - a series of announcements made by crystals of salt.
Seemingly the evidence of climate anomalies such as residues of evaporating lakes, they appear as an alien ecology in the parched, brown desert.
Salt tells us of its abundance on the planet, and how still it has been made to feel scarce.
Salt lines are forecasts that droughts and floods are on their way, saltiness is a temperament marking the onset of anxiety.
Salt tells us how Lot’s wife was punished by turning into salt for choosing a life of worldliness over salvation.
Salt tells us how when spilled it is an evil omen, but also wards off evil spirits. The alien is us and we are alien.
Salt is translucency, it both absorbs and desicates.
Salt is semiotic.
Salt tells us how it can preserve art in a time of war because it sucks moisture from the air.
Salt, a memory holder.
Salt, as used in ancient alchemy, stays after the physical body has combusted out of all substance. It survives human death, it corrodes but preserves.
Salt begins to appeal to our own bodies, till we realize that what is alien is actually an essential component within us.
Salt songs are protests. Salt marshes and salt marches.
Salt songs are melodies of the particles that inhabit it, extract it, crush it, pan it, carry it, claim it. Salt sounds like plucked strings. Brass bands.
Salt songs are the sounds of salt crystals thrown on the sides of pavements, of salt crystals forming.
Salt songs mimic the forms of crystalline structures, cubic. Irregular and impure.
Salt songs sound eerie and familiar both. Salt songs inspire humans to recognize the rising salt levels around the world, and tune into the salt within us to find an equilibrium.
all images: desertx 2023. image courtesy lance gerber/desertx.