In her recently released full-length debut, Our Hands Against the Dusk, Indian American musician, Rachika Nayar digitally mutates her textured guitar playing and combines the resulting sounds with shimmering synthesizer crescendos, lyrical piano, and orchestral strings. Through that process, the album fuses a range of genres: modern composers, deconstructive electronic, even Midwestern emo and beyond. The winding compositions into which they are layered are presented here in an audio-visual performance. Accompanying the music, a dreamlike visual narrative emerges across found and personal videos and intense light displays. Through this kaleidoscopic nexus of video and audio, Nayar explores childhood memory, loss, ancestral legacies, and intimacy—the many simultaneous histories and multiplicities that make up a queer life.
Selected visuals in the performance are taken from 52 Short Films by Frances Arpaia, a queer trans woman who “lives in Brooklyn and makes weird films.”
Created, Performed by Rachika Nayar
Cellist, Issei Herr
Cellist, Issei Herr
Photography by Ahad Subzwari
