Sadia Sadia

Sadia Sadia
Website	Chimera Arts

Sadia Sadia is an installation artist working across a wide variety of media, including sound, still and moving images. She is also an award-winning record producer and songwriter.

Sadia began her career by becoming one of the first women in the world to be signed to a major label as a record producer.^[1][2] Sadia’s installation works include multiple elements of imagery and sound to create immersive environments, frequently incorporating manipulation or distortion of time.

1978 – 1993

Sadia worked largely with the Canadian guitar player David Wilcox, producing the albums ^[3] Out of the Woods, My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble, Bad Reputation, Breakfast at the Circus, and The Natural Edge, many of which achieved gold or platinum status. She also co-wrote many of the titles on these albums. On these discs, she is billed simply as 'Sadia', or occasionally, "S. Sadia." These recordings also formed the basis of a number of 'Greatest Hits' packages, including the platinum-selling 'Over Sixty Minutes With'.^[4]

1993 – present

Founding member of the multimedia world fusion project Equa with Stephen W. Tayler. Signed to Polygram (Australia) in 1996, producing the eponymously titled ARIA ^[5] nominated album 'EQUA' in the same year.

The Sydney Dance Company has two works in their permanent repertoire, 'Unwitting Sight' (1998) ^[6] and 'Cradle Song' (2001) ^[7] choreographed by Wakako Asano^[8] to music by Equa.

In 1996, Sadia also worked on the TUC 'Respect:Unite Against Racism' campaign, producing the single 'Respect' featuring dozens of international recording artists. The project received a commendation from the House of Commons (UK) through the passage of an Early Day Motion (EDM), as well as national media coverage..

Sadia's work has been widely sequenced to films and television programmes by companies such as Polygram/Miramax, Interscope, and Universal Pictures, among others.^[9]

Film and installations

Sadia produced, edited, and (working with Stephen W. Tayler as Equa) scored the short film The Noon Gun.^[10] Based on footage originally shot in Afghanistan in 1971, and with the support of the British Council,^[11]The Noon Gun had its world premiere at the 53rd Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2004. It subsequently had its UK premiere at the National Museum for Photography, Film and Television (now the National Media Museum ^[12]) in Bradford in September 2004. Shortlisted for the Satyajit Ray Foundation ^[13] Short Film Competition, it has featured in film festivals worldwide.^[14]

As a filmmaker, Sadia has also produced and edited the short 'The End of the Party: Hyde Park 1969',^[15] a view of the 60's based on previously unseen footage of the famous first performance by Blind Faith in Hyde Park; produced and edited 'Iggy the Eskimo Girl',^[16] a short featuring Syd Barrett's (Pink Floyd) girlfriend Iggy, ubiquitously and affectionately known in the 1960s as 'Iggy the Eskimo girl'; and directed, produced and edited the film 'Lit From Within: The Film and Glass Works of Anthony Stern',^[17] a short documentary by Sadia about the filmmaker and glass artist Anthony Stern, which explores some of Anthony's life and works, and examines the aesthetic and philosophical relationship between glass and film as materials through which light passes. She also worked as director, editor, producer and sound designer on 'San Francisco Redux No. 1',^[18] the first installment of a multi-channel installation work. The latter films had their world premiere as part of the curated programme 'Le Cinema D'Avant-Garde' at Cinémathèque Française ^[19] in Paris, France on June 27, 2008.

Sadia is also the creator of the single channel video installation 'The Memory of Water (Part 1)' ^[20][21] which was acquired by Australian Centre for the Moving Image ^[22](ACMI) to form part of its permanent collection of exemplary works by Australian and international artists. It featured in the exhibition 'Proof: The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes'. The work ran as a loop from 09.12.04 to 13.02.05 as part of the show, as well as appearing on a number of exterior screens in Federation Square, Melbourne.

Sadia is an occasional contributor to the photography magazine 'DayFour',^[23] most recently in the DayFour 'Ulysses II' ^[24] publication and exhibition at printspace, London, December 2010- January 2011.

In 2009, Sadia was awarded a Studio 18 artists' residency,^[25] for international "contemporary visual artists pursuing an innovative practice in a professional capacity", at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia. This also marked the first public view of her 2009 installation work 'Noise/Ghosts of Noise'.^[26]

During this time she commenced work on her filmed multi-channel installation, 'Metamorphoses in 'A' Minor,^[27] filmed at the Kennedy Miller Mitchell motion capture soundstage at Sydney Gate in Sydney, Australia, with the support of Gertrude Contemporary and a British Council (Aus) Project Grant.^[28] The work takes place over three ‘movements’ or ‘chapters’, 'Formation', 'Emergence' and 'Flight' and features the Australian dancer and choreographer Wakako Asano,^[29] a longtime performer with the Sydney Dance Company under the tenure of creative director Graeme Murphy. It is set to an original neo-classical composition produced in collaboration with the UK composer and sound artist Stephen W. Tayler (Suzanne Vega, Peter Gabriel, Éric Serra, Bob Geldof, Kate Bush), using recorded layers and repetitive themes that build sequentially until an eventual moment of release. It is a work in the tradition of symbolic mysticism, an exploration of the transformative nature of the individual.^[30] The work relies heavily on time manipulation, and part of the challenge was to both produce and improvise movement that would be played back at speeds other than the speed at which it was originally filmed. This also provided cinematographic challenges, which were met through the use of digital cameras, including a Phantom high-speed digital camera running at 1500 fps (frames per second) to produce ultra-slow-motion.

Since January 2013 Sadia has been based out of Real World Studios.

In January 2014, Sadia completed ‘All Time and Space Fold into the Infinite Present (Cataract Gorge)’^[31] a large-scale three channel filmed installation with an accompanying eight channel soundfield. The work features footage of the rapids captured by the artist in Cataract Gorge, Launceston, Tasmania. The footage has been slowed down and colour balanced to resemble deep space, while the motion remains that of the water. This produces a meditative work that draws together the artist’s ideas about time, space, and the land. The accompanying eight (8) channel soundfield is constructed of audio captured by the artist in the Gorge.^[32]

The work premiered at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG)^[33] Inveresk, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia’s largest regional museum, on January 10, 2014 and ran through March 2, 2014. It has since been acquired by the museum for their permanent collection.

On June 10 & 11 2015, ‘Ghosts of Noise’^[34] was screened and discussed as part of the international colloquium ‘Les Devenirs Artistiques de L’Information’^[35][36] at Sorbonne Paris, co-sponsored by Le Bauhaus-Universität Weimar & Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM),^[37] the Birmingham Center for Media and Cultural Research,^[38] and ELICO Equipe de recherche^[39] de Lyon.

Books

On June 26, 2013 Sadia's first book 'Notes To An Unknown Lover'^[40] was released by Bybrook Press.^[41] It is held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.^[42]

References

External links

• Chimera Arts Official website for Sadia Sadia, Equa and The Noon Gun
• IMDb Entry Sadia Sadia