Brooklyn-based visual artist and musician Hisham Bharoocha has had his plate full as of late. Sole founder and member of Soft Circle, Bharoocha released a split 12 inch with High Places (available on iTunes now) in July, has shown his photography and collage work in multiple group shows, and most recently has launched two projects with Sound Screen Design.

The first of which, released in October, is part of the label’s Artist Music Journal series, a collaboration with artists and musicians in the form of small, limited edition art books. Bharoocha’s book, the fourth in the series, includes collage work and installation drawings inspired in part by his music and notions of sound and rhythm.

Bharoocha’s second project with Sound Screen Design, Musician as Designer, is a series of musician designed t-shirts. Bharoocha has designed a shirt for the project, and additionally is curating those designed by Eye (Boredoms), Bjorn Copeland (Black Dice), Zach Hill (Hella/Wavves), Brian Degraw (Gang Gang Dance), and others who are yet to be announced.

Bharoocha graciously answered a few questions for Dossier via email, expounding on these two projects, and his creative processes both artistically and musically.

Could you describe your book a bit?

This book is one in a series Sound Screen Design has published, in which musicians who are also visual artists make artist books.  Some of the other artists who have made books or will be making them are Daniel Higgs, Bongout, Bjorn Copeland (Black Dice), Brian Roettinger (Hand Held Heart) to name a few.

I decided to create an archive of my past collage work and a few mural collage/drawings I’ve done.  These works all felt like they directly related to sound in one way or another. I also put some more transitional works in the book that describe how my ideas are moving towards minimalism and my interest in mental associations to certain imagery, particularly how we think of ‘nature’, spirituality and discovery.  This is my first artist book and I was very excited for it to come out.  

As I understand it, the aim of the Artist Music Journal is to display the “inseparable connection between music and art.”  How did being both artist and musician influence your work for this book?

I feel the collages and murals I have included in the book have a lot to do with rhythm and movement. This can be movement created internally in the mind or the simple visceral experience of looking at visual work and creating a rhythm with ones eyes while absorbing a composition.  The collages and murals are created with a cyclical rhythm in mind, where the eye can wander about without a start or end point.  This is an aspect you can see in a lot of my music as well.  I like music that is cyclical and trance inducing, where one gets lost in the composition.

Also, how similar are your processes when making art and music?

I feel the beginning of both processes are very similar for me.  In creating visual work, I will make a mark, then I build upon that mark by creating a relationship between the line or object with another mark and so on until the composition feels finished.  The same goes with music.  I will build sounds based on the first mark while adding and taking away elements until it feels complete.  I think about negative space the same way with music as well as visual art.  You must have negative space to have the rhythm really vibrate.

As someone who seems to be constantly creating and doing so in various media, what are some of your influences? And do you draw from the same influences for both music and your art?

I am influenced by all the creative mediums with which I come into contact.  In New York it’s constant and the internet has so much information as well- I get quite overwhelmed often by how many amazing things are being made all the time.

In terms of visual artists I love Gabriel Orozco, Rosemarie Trockel, Lothar Hempel, Katharina Grosse, Rinko Kawauchi, Dieter Roth, Richard Tuttle, Francis Bacon, Hans Arp- to name just a few I’ve been enjoying recently. I’ve been really excited by artists who create a sense of capturing moments that have passed and make work that conveys the air of that moment in which the artist created the work.  I like the idea of art work that can only exist temporarily in a space in which it is created, where a record of it’s creation exists but the experience for the artist has passed. The finished product is the remnants of what the artist experienced in the space, which is then something that is only left in the memory bank of the mind. This is the beauty of life and I feel this idea, of moments being experienced then passing, is something I think about when creating my installation work.  I like to make something where you feel the concentration I’ve put into the work but I am absent,and the work will be erased from the wall or room when the exhibition is over.  This is also a reference to Tibetan sand mandala paintings.

In terms of music I love all different types of music, but I feel my work is influenced by musicians/composers who use cyclical movement such as Steve Reich or Terry Riley.  I love techno music like Basic Channel, Omar S, Wolfgang Voigt, Plastikman, and Aphex Twin.  I also love traditional drumming music from Africa, as well as Brazilian Batucada music. There’s a Portugese band called Buraka Som Sistema that I was listening to all summer. I am also a big fan of death metal and love bands such as Cannibal Corpse, Meshuggah, Morbid Angel, Pestilence, and Decapitated.  The relationship between all this music in my mind is that it all creates a drone that can relate to a meditative state of mind, as well as an overwhelmed mind where thought cannot exist.  Once the music starts and you get into the feel of it, you don’t think about the beginning or the end of the composition- you get lost and go into a trance inducing state.  I love this feeling and often try to create it within my music as well.

Although I must admit I have recently been into creating songs which have lyrics, verses, and a chorus because it is a new challenge for me to make short concise songs.  I come from an experimental, improvisational background, and I believe we all have to challenge ourselves to move forward.

You expressed that your book captures an “era of development” for you. I was wondering if you could describe this era for us.

H: In art school I was concentrating on making photographic and video works.  When I finished school I didn’t have access to the dark room or video editing equipment, so I started making collages.  These kept developing and I ended up making them a large part of my practice. These collages seem to show how I was trying to make work that was overwhelming in content.  I started creating the murals because I felt the scale of doing drawings on the wall was moving, and I wanted to overwhelm people with an experience.  This has led to me to create more minimal works in which I challenge myself to make less marks. I believe this makes the viewer concentrate on each mark more intently, as well as concentrate on the symbolism of each element within a composition.

I know you are also designing and curating a musician-designed t-shirt series. Was your design inspired by your music? What musicians are you working with? And have you found any synesthetic correlations between the musicians designs and their music?

With the t-shirt series the goal is for the artists who usually make merchandise for their bands to create something where they don’t have to think about their own band or put their band logo on the shirt.  This is a project for musicians who make visual work to take a break from thinking about their bands and to challenge themselves to make something that they wouldn’t usually create.

Some of the other artists who will create shirts are Eye (Boredoms), Bjorn Copeland (Black Dice), Zach Hill (Hella/Wavves), Brian Degraw (Gang Gang Dance) and a few more we haven’t solidified yet.  There will be some more amazing artists I promise!

In terms of my shirt, it is reminiscent of my music as it creates a rhythm through the way the deign was printed.  With music it is obvious that the sound waves are absorbed by your ears as well as your body and you create an opinion about the experience you are having through your body.  With the work you see in the book as well as the t-shirt, you can see that it relates to rhythm because the works vibrate. I am extremely interested in this vibration and I am always trying to figure out ways to make it happen in different forms.

Lastly, it’s been awhile since the release of Full Bloom, are you working on a follow-up? Also, you showed at Fuse Gallery this year, any other shows on the horizon?

H: I am currently working on a new Soft Circle album that will hopefully be coming out this upcoming spring on a label called PPM, which is Dean Spunt from No Age’s label.  He is a great guy to work with, completely supportive of the artist.  I had a split 12 inch record with the band High Places (it can also be bought on iTunes) that came out in July.  I can’t wait to get the album done, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to get more music out there.

I’ve been in many group shows since that Fuse show but I am currently working on a new body of work, as well as collaborations with different artists such as Aviram Cohen and Ahonen + Lamberg.  I am also working on doing more artist residencies this next year, as well as doing a lot of touring for the album

Make sure to check out Bharoocha’s website, www.hishamb.com and these two projects over at Sound Screen Design.