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Performance Rhythm as Knowledge Venice Biennale

Performance: Rhythm as Knowledge, Venice Biennale

Sirish Manji (tabla) + Alice Mazzili (live drawing) + Sha Xin Wei (responsive media) + Carolyn Smith (Geography)

Soil Rhythms and the City Workshop | Architecture Biennale 2025 | Venice | 16:00 – 17:00 CET 6 November 2025

The proposed performance + participatory installation interspersed with discussion draws together learning from the creative workshops which have taken place throughout the Rhythm as Knowledge programme, and presents a participative event at Speakers’ Corner.  Our proposal centres on how rhythm offers critical new insight into the connections between natural, collective and artificial intelligence, and how a sensitivity to rhythm allows these to come together in concert.  The idea is not to impart this knowledge in theory, but to sensitise the public through an interactive rhythmic experience of this architectural space.  It begins with a spoken introduction to the project and its themes, followed by the concert performance (by Alice and Sirish, augmented by Xin Wei’s installations).  After about half an hour the concert then evolves into a participative performance.  The public and other participants will be invited to experiment and play with rhythm (via sound, gesture and movement) as agents within a collective, guided by our performers and the responsive installation.  We allow some time at the end for concluding discussion.

Sirish will perform with tabla drums: seated at center stage near the presenter’s table. His wireless mic will broadcast his voice. Mics on fixed locations will pick up his drumming as he approaches and transmit audio to the sound system. His rhythmic drumming constitutes an acoustic sensing of the architectural space.  Alice draws on her paper surface (on the table and / or suspended from her backdrop stand) in a series of flowing gestures. Alice draws freehand patterns — asemic curves and sweeps — on large paper sheets on the table or a vertical board.  Her drawing constitutes a sensing of the architectural space antiphonal to Sirish’s performative action. Xin Wei’s responsive media software takes (1) live mic input from Sirish’s drumming, and (2) live camera feed of Alice’s drawing and analyzes the rhythms to modulate the fields of sound and light streaming through the Speakers Corner.

See the Rhythm in Venice Program, Ca’ Foscari + University of Cambridge.