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On the occasion of their residency at Cubitt Gallery (Winter/Spring 2024/25) 

Seán Elder: 

Hi, welcome to Cubitt, my name's Sean Elder and I'm the current Curatorial Fellow. And today, I'm In conversation with Aliaskar Abarkus who is currently in-residence at Cubitt Gallery. This residency sits in a period following the end of our 2024 exhibitions and ahead of further programming next year, including a solo project by Nicola Singh. 

The Cubitt fellowship programme is entering a fallow period, term used to describe a period of rest, repair, and restoration in farming practices. As I begin to prepare for the next period in 2025, as well as reflecting on the preceding programme from 2023, our gallery space is going to be used in a number of different ways. As part of this, we will be inviting Alaskar Abarkus to be in residence. 

Aliaskar's practice sits at the intersection of alternative pedagogy, expanded choreography and with a strong focus on sound. Throughout the residency, they will serve as a mediator between Cubitt and Alaska's existing creative, and affective communities. Exploring ways to expand collaboration, and bring people together for collective work. 

During the residency Aliaskar is undertaking a number of activities, including listening sessions, group meals, and is also inviting artists, students, curators and those without access to formal education structures to take part in 

in-person conversations. To book an appointment. Please contact aliaskar by the email address provided in the webpage. 

So, with that introduction over, I'll just introduce Aliaskar. 

Hello Aliaskar. 

Aliaskar Abarkas: 

Hi Seán, Thanks for the introduction, and thanks for having me. 

SE: 

I just wanted to start before asking a few questions related to your practise and your ongoing research to set the scene with discussing how we first met, which was when you were first undertaking Syllabus, which is an alternative learning programme, run between institutions including Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire, Eastside Projects in Birmingham and Spike Island in Bristol. There's a new cohort of organisations, I believe taking part now, which has expanded that a little bit. But I was aware then as I am now, that research is an important part of your practice and follows on from studies at University of Tehran and Goldsmiths where you studied art and politics. 

You were also part of Open School East where your current whistling choir project began its first outings, as well as taking part in post-natural studies amongst other alternative learning programmes. So before we talk about whistling, air, and breath, I wanted to ask what it means to be undertaking these types of learning, and what they mean for you to be outwith the academy? 

You have an ongoing series of podcasts with TACO! that have invited guests also interested in alternative learning and I wondered if you could talk about that for a little while and detail, perhaps, What is it that these more Collective Community anchored forms of learning are doing? 

In place of something, that may be more conventional or more traditionally-academic structures, either weren't giving you or were doing in a different way? 

AA: 

I suddenly found myself left alone, when I graduated from university. I had always wanted to be an artist, but I took a longer path, which was more fulfilling, 

I studied visual culture, sociology, and the politics of contemporary art. As a result, both in my undergraduate and postgraduate studies, I had limited direct contact with artists—I didn’t study an MFA, for example. I believe my practice truly began to take shape with the Syllabus Programme. Over the years, it matured into the approach and methods I use today. 

I took part in various programmes, each of them complementing the other. There was no single way to run an alternative educational programme. Along the way, I explored the theoretical understanding of what art means to me and established my own perspective. I also built the support network I have today, with each of these programmes contributing to it. 

Moreover, it wasn’t only about nourishing my practice but also about fostering a sense of belonging and rootedness within a community of artists and cultural workers—one that I have been in dialogue with ever since, including yourself. 

I always performed well at school—whatever that means. I could thrive under pressure and in competitive environments, but I also became increasingly aware of the toll they took on my mental health. Fortunately, in recent years, I have experienced very different models of education, which made me want to promote spaces for communal, non-hierarchical learning. 

I developed a broader understanding of what art education means to me. I’ve always disliked competition and at some point, I actively wanted to challenge it in my own way of working. Perhaps it was the alternative education programmes and the people I encountered that felt more aligned with these values. 

SE: 

Do you think that there's a relationship of reparative reading, or I'm just thinking about Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s idea of Reparative Reading and the idea that there might be a reparative way to engage with education practices? 

I'm just thinking because you mentioned Idea of harm, the education structures can instill sometimes and then you mentioned competition and competitiveness and what that can breed. So do you think that there was a sort of, critical re-engagement with that? 

AA: 

Right. 

Academic studies rely heavily on existing bodies of knowledge, often encountered through texts. Alternative education programmes, however, seek to acknowledge other forms of learning, such as sonic, somatic, and embodied practices in a more 

holistic way. In that sense, they can offer a reparative approach to learning—one that moves away from the competitive and often rigid structures of academia. Instead of reinforcing hierarchies of knowledge, they open up space for more intuitive, relational, and healing forms of engagement. 

SE: 

Well, that makes sense with what you were saying about the nourishment coming with a sense of belonging and sort of conceiving of an artistic community as a place of belonging. 

AA: 

Alternative education programmes are often more open-ended, peer-led and foster collaboration. There are fewer expectations in terms of artistic production or predefined notions of what it means to ‘perform’ as an artist. Instead, these programmes focus on holding space together and negotiating our needs collectively. 

I would also say they are far more imaginative in envisioning possibilities—both in terms of artistic practice and structural flexibility. They adapt to how we want to engage, rather than dictating a fixed path. 

It’s important to emphasise that these programmes differ significantly in structure, operational models, and sustainability. However, a common thread among them is their role in creating platforms—situations that enable encounters and connections. Over the years, I have come to value this the most: the friendships I’ve built and the conversations I’ve had with peers. 

It’s not just about developing a practice—it’s about being part of a community that has given me a sense of belonging. It has made me feel more rooted, more integrated within an artistic ecosystem. Being an artist can be lonely, but it doesn’t 

have to be. Through these encounters, my work has become increasingly dialectical—shaped by and in dialogue with the people who inspire me. 

I think the idea of creating such spaces of togetherness has gradually become integral to my practice. That influence stems directly from these programmes. My work remains open-ended precisely because it exists in constant conversation with others—in relation to the context, the space, and the people involved. 

As an artist, I see my role as a mediator—bridging the space and the opportunities I have while opening them up to multiple perspectives. I aim to radically expand and proliferate viewpoints, much like a prism that disperses light into a spectrum of possibilities. This act of dispersing and highlighting diversity is central to what I do. 

That’s also what I mean when I describe my work as contingent in outcome. You mentioned the radio, and I think that medium became a way for me to consciously reflect on how these programmes have shaped my practice. I wanted to situate my methodology within that culture and to acknowledge its impact. 

Each time I invited a guest who had played a role in shaping such programmes, it was an opportunity to learn from them—to engage with their experiences and insights. At the same time, I wanted to spotlight the many different ways artists and educators create these vital spaces for collective learning and exchange. 

SE: 

Yeah, and I think that relates to the way you describe your practice as contingent. I think about it as - you're very situated and relational and it has both this hyper local context of this community which you know, we'll talk about later. When you talk about the All the Whistlers project in more detail. 

But there's the sort of hyper-local, quite intimate connections that you've developed through this project. Then there's also this sort of adaptive way of working that moves between different informal educational structures but also different institutions and contexts for performance and art making. 

A term you used in describing this residency and an approach and methodology was apophenia. Which is in short, a tendency to perceive meaningful connections or patterns. Between unrelated elements. And in reading up on this method or approach, I was struck by two things. 

In particular - one’s this way that It speaks to a really specific mode of research-based practices. As I've said before, I always understood your practice as research-based, but perhaps not in a way that conforms to academic standards. And I think this process-based approach rings true, when thinking about what art is or can do when it functions in a research-driven way. 

It reminds me of my own interest in Weak Theory and the way that theory is driven from the effects of daily life, rather than attempts to create a sort of strong and water-tight knowledge. 

The second thing that made me think about was neurodiversity and the ways that we consider thinking and pattern recognition. 

I know that you've worked with Maggie Matić on a number of interviews on the subject, but I wondered, whether you'd also sort of drawn a line between that lived experience of neurodivergence and ability, or maybe a manner by which we we might approach knowledge, thinking, and creation in different ways. 

AA: 

Correct. I like this. I enjoy describing my methodologies in relation to specific terms, which I define clearly when I use them. In this case, apophenia—the tendency to perceive meaningful connections or patterns between seemingly unrelated elements. 

Thinking with apophenia guides a process-driven method that continually seeks logical correlations between disparate ideas, individuals, and contexts. This approach is central to how I work. It allows relationships between apparent randomness to become nuanced, and I see my role as an artist as precisely that—to bring out these nuances. 

For me, practice is a process of unfolding—a perpetual exploration that weaves connections into a narrative that constantly deepens, expands, and takes on new forms. 

One question I was deeply invested in during my graduate studies was: What does practice-based research really mean? I was particularly inspired by certain modalities of writing within conceptual art. I studied methodologies from movements such as Art & Language Journal and Relational Aesthetics, as well as theorists like Peter Osborne, especially his concept of postconceptual art. I also examined how practices like Forensic Architecture operate across disciplines, navigating different fields to construct knowledge. 

At the time, I was planning to pursue a PhD immediately after my Master’s. I was actively developing my research methods, but I eventually realised that traditional academia was too restrictive for the way my brain works. That realisation led me to take a different path, engaging instead with alternative education programmes. 

Art has the ability to transmediate between disciplines—it can be radically imaginative and speculative. And I don’t believe it always needs to arrive at a fixed conclusion. 

Much like apophenia, I instinctively find logical correlations between disparate events and elements— and this doesn’t align with conventional academic methods. I found it liberating to operate outside those structures. The rhythm of learning and creating feels different—more fluid, more playful. 

I thrive on finding connections between seemingly unrelated patterns and bringing them together. That’s where the narrative emerges in my work—it develops organically. And in that process of correlation, a story unfolds. That’s what my practice is, and what it continuously becomes. 

SE: 

But I'm interested in the idea of even that moment of pattern recognition. And I feel like there's a real sense of perceptiveness in your practice. 

That through your work with a choir, through your work with negotiating those relationships between a choir, composers, artists, that there's a perceptiveness and understanding of relationships and what they need. But I guess you sort of described recognising those patterns as a sort of approaching logic. 

But I guess I'm also wondering if there's a sort of emotional more bodily aspect of this is - is it a logical process or is it illogical, or is the emotional in itself a logical process? 

AA: 

That’s an interesting question. I think this is also how I find possibilities for collaboration—I recognise connections between different people I work with, even when they might not seem immediately obvious. In a way, it’s similar to curatorial temporalities. 

I invite many people into my processes, and their perspectives organically shape the narratives as they develop. My role is that of a director, editor, and choreographer of these encounters. 

As much as I have a direction in mind and anticipate certain outcomes, the process is heavily shaped by those I work with. I am interested in telling stories through music, which doesn’t need to create meaning in a conventional sense. 

SE: 

And I think those modalities They're very specific,culturally and geographically, but that also allows for there to be certain fluidity between different states. 

And I was thinking about growing up, I benefited from free instrument tuition in schools. So, learnt western music and understanding that a scale is this many notes and you have the Fourth and the Fifth, and there was an understanding that I had grown up with… and you then encounter different types of scales - so I'm thinking I maybe think about this because of the work that you're doing with the whistling choir but also the Commission that I'm working on with Nicola Singh next year. She’s exploring Dhrupad, which is a type of devotional singing in North India, which goes back to like the pre-Vedic era I think… actually I think before that. 

But there's Western scales and then you have other types of scales and that just creates a whole different structure through which to engage with those modalities of music and one of the things I was interested about whistling was how unruly it is. 

There's this real difficulty in structuring it sometimes - or maybe not structuring it but those notes and sounds move in different ways to an instrument 

AA: 

Yes, well, I didn’t come from a strong musical background, and the way I arrived at working with music was quite naïve in that sense—but I saw that as a strength. 

I aimed to make my learning process radically visible, embracing the idea of exposing it rather than concealing it. At the same time, I wanted to invite others into that process without the need to relate to any particular musical tradition. 

For me, it’s about experimenting—welcoming spontaneity, improvisation, and the unpredictability of sound. It’s also about learning how to direct and shape all these elements as they unravel. 

SE: 

I mean I was I was going to say so we just haven't had an overall explanation of All The Whistlers. So I was wondering if you could just briefly describe the project and maybe detail some of the partners and the composers and collaborators that you've worked with, and I think that'll lead me on to my final question. 

AA: 

Well, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact starting point of a project. 

But with the whistling project, I would say there was a moment of intensification in 2022, during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. 

I had been interested in whistling for quite some time—thinking about music, whistling, and how I might work with it. But in 2022, as a deeply emotional response to what was happening in my home country, I invited people to take part in a collective act of whistling as part of a fundraising event. The audience was invited to whistle together, performing melodies and songs that had been used as revolutionary protest songs during the Iranian revolution. 

I taught the melody to the audience in the simplest way possible and encouraged them to whistle together. What I was trying to do was remove the barriers of language and lyrics—whistling became a minimal yet powerful entry point to unity, a modest gesture using an everyday sonic material. 

I found something deeply moving in that shared energy. The group dynamic was incredibly strong, and I realised there was something there I wanted to explore further. There were so many possibilities I was curious to try. 

I later developed the project further as part of the Open School East final event, taking it out into a community setting at Cliftonville Cultural Centre in Margate. We hosted weekly rehearsal sessions, experimenting with different methods—listening sessions, sonic exercises, and simply holding space through music. 

I also wanted to step back from the traditional role of the artist as the sole creator and instead invite participants to take an active role in shaping the project. They contributed to decision-making, documentation, and the recording of sounds and images. It became less about creating a polished final outcome and more about whatever happened in between—the process itself became the focus. 

After Open School East, I was awarded a residency at Swiss Church, London. I wanted to place greater emphasis on creating a platform for learning rather than simply producing work. With the space available to me once a month, I invited an artist whose practice interested me to co-facilitate each session. I learned so much 

from them in the process. Through this, I developed a range of skills in facilitation, composition, and collaborative practice. 

At that point in my career, I felt that I wouldn’t necessarily benefit from taking part in further development programmes. However, mentorship remains crucial throughout an artist’s career. My needs had become more specific, so instead of following a structured programme, I invited artists I was genuinely interested in learning from—and I shared that learning process with participants as well. 

Each session was completely different, simply because every artist held space in their own unique way. This also helped increase participation, as each invited guest brought their own audience and network into the project. The sessions were always open to the public, and there was no fixed choir membership—anyone could join. 

SE: 

Well, it also means that there's not a singular flow of learning or pedagogy in that direction - there's multiple directions through which that's travelling. 

AA: 

Yeah, totally. It was about proliferating perspectives. The community whistling choir evolved into All the Whistlers. It wasn’t about working with an existing community but rather about organically creating one. My work moved through many phases, each flowing into the next. 

I also wanted to expand the idea of collaboration beyond individuals—to an institutional scale. Institutions can often be self-centred, so I wanted to explore the possibility of a cross-institutional way of working—a nomadic, quasi-platform where participants could experience different spaces. 

Institutions are living bodies, shaped by the individuals who work within them. I wanted to create structures that were loose enough to allow audiences across these institutions to meet, connect, and form friendships—which they did. 

The project was funded by an Arts Council Project Grant, and I collaborated with TACO!, The Barbican Centre, ICA, The Mosaic Rooms, Sadler’s Wells, and Cubitt 

SE: 

Yeah and very it seems like Made a lot more sense for it to continue that polyvocal, multi-authored form. 

I think involving like all of those composers across all of the partner organisations, Made a lot of sense, so It means that you got to a stage where the project became this sort of itinerant, mobile choir, that expanded and contracted depending on sessions and partnership with, you know, there was the Swiss Church, there was… 

AA: 

I worked with each institution in a different capacity. For example, our work at Cubitt, as you described, was a period of fallow—a transitional phase that allowed my work to evolve into its next stage. 

At this point, I introduced another term instead of choir—what I describe as choiring: 

A moment of intensification, driven by multiple instigators—an event that transcends solitude, embodying a perpetual potential for scaling up and amplifying the individual into the colossal. The act of choiring is a dynamic transformation: 

segregated bodies unify into a louder collective entity. No longer isolated, but interconnected despite their diversity. 

It extends borders and boundaries, affirming its presence through shared resonance. No longer invisible, bodies come together, collectively rising to be held. Choiring is a political act—an assertion of voice and presence, demanding acknowledgment and recognition. It is both an act of unification and a declaration of existence, where disparate elements find strength and significance in their shared capacity. 

It was never about making music in the traditional sense. I don’t reduce it to performance, nor participatory work. What I do is contemporary art. 

I question scale as a form of materiality—one that is inherently present in a choir. Choiring transforms the individual into a collective force. It amplifies presence, expands scale, and resists invisibility. But to what extent? It is always evolving—always capable of growing louder. 

And yet, this is also how it remains hyper-localised. 

So, here we are at Cubitt, with our first event: an intimate listening session. Revisiting over 50 hours of documented sound, we select, edit, and invite the audience to participate in a different way. 

SE: 

Yeah, you know, I mean I wanted to sort of bring that into my final question. I think it's a good point. Uh, because, you know, I was there for the presentation of the project to CAPC in Bordeaux, and it was a very different experience, the listening session, uh, as a sort of Retrospective, or maybe even reflexive process. 

To be in that space with other people listening,we had our four speakers in each corner of the gallery. So, the physicality of the music felt really present. There's something very emotional, very bodily about working with breath and voice and singing. I think sometimes there is a little bit less vulnerability whistling versus singing, But I just wanted to finish by asking about managing those elements like, vulnerability, collaboration And about how that operates through the materiality of breath or whistling? 

AA: 

Managing spontaneity and improvisation is a skill I’ve developed over time—learning to respond to a situation and work with the materials in front of me without fully controlling them in advance. But it’s never the same process twice. The parameters shift each time—the group, the space, the atmosphere, the mood. 

I want my work to be inclusive, but navigating inclusivity is complex. I think a lot about how to create activities that are genuinely engaging—keeping them light and playful without simplifying them. 

As the project evolved through more gatherings, friendships naturally formed. I got to know the regular participants, and when I discovered they had creative practices, I considered how I could integrate their work into the project. 

That’s why, for example, I commissioned Carlos and Hasti to write two poems for the final event at the Swiss Church. That event, The Whistlers’ Birthday Party, was designed as an evening of collective celebration. In that case, the poems became the foundation for group singing. 

I also commissioned Nitamortei, a performance artist from within the group, to develop their own piece. I baked a massive cake, and together we decorated it. There were around a hundred of us. That was a turning point—it’s when I really began thinking about different modalities of collaboration, moving beyond 

participation to co-creation, about how to think collectively about our resources and how to share them. 

At its most fundamental level, breath becomes a form of cohabitation, co-existence—a way of coming together, of getting closer. 

The event at CAPC (Bordeaux) was very different from everything else. It was a standalone experience, and I approached it almost as a choreography— That was an experiment, and a valuable one. At Cubitt, we took a different approach—one that focused on intimacy and dialogue. 

For example, at Cubitt, we hosted a meal for the curators and composers involved in the project. I invited Adriana Gallo to collaborate with me, and together we designed a meal that explored the sonic aspects of communal eating. It was an intimate evening where curators and composers I had worked with could meet, connect, and exchange ideas. 

SE: 

Yeah, it feels like there's so many partners and so many avenues to the project. 

It really was a special thing to be at that meeting point, retrospectively. But I think there was something really, uh, Understandable about the specificity of the different ways that these things have unfolded and it's been really wonderful to hear about the project and it's great to have you at Cubit for a while. 

AA: 

Thank you so much. It's great working with you and Cubitt. 

SE: 

And I don't know if I can finish by asking this, but I wondered if you’d whistle for the recording? 

AA: 

[Laughs] Yeah. Let's do it together. 

SE: 

I'm really bad. Okay. 

AA: 

Let's just finish with one singular tone. 

Both: 

[Harmonising whistle tones]