Cindy Islam: Bedroom Frequencies

A Tramway Performance Now commission for Take Me Somewhere festival (21 May - 5 June)

Immersive VR Film
Premiere

*Tickets: Access to all Take Me Somewhere festival works and events are via their Festival Pass. Visit their website for info/booking > *

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Thu 27 May, 8.30pm (30 mins)
+ 2D version on demand 28-29 May

Bedroom Frequencies renders a virtual reality experience of a biographic narrative about a young girl growing up in a strict and violent household. Going out, partying or attending mixed gendered environments were prohibited, and with the rest of the home hostile, the girl had nowhere but a small bedroom. It was here she found a safe sense of freedom - performing in front of the mirror, using the body and sound together in synchronicity to combat feelings of trauma and isolation. A space for imagination and dreaming, where she would formulate stories of love and passion, in the hope that one day her thoughts could breed a different reality. 

Bedroom Frequencies is about being alone in bravery and vulnerability. Where the mind can transcend walls and the restraints of the body. A place to be free from the expectations of the outside world and a vortex into creating other worlds. 

This virtual reality experience conveys sound, light, textures and movement, whilst giving the audience agency to roam freely within the interiors of imagination. 

ACCESS: The work is an interactive 360 film which is highly visual and does not contain any spoken text.

Content warning: The narrative in this work could potentially be triggering to anyone who has experienced child abuse and/or domestic violence.

About the Artist
Cindy Islam is one of the artist’s most recent pseudonyms. The artist uses different identities and anonymity as a way to critique the "celebrity" status afforded to some artists.

Cindy Islam is a counter(re)action of Britishness. Cindy Islam is the aftermath of thirty years of failing to comply with assimilative demands. Cindy Islam forges a Diasporic reality of ambivalence and rejection of homogeneous cultural values. Flux, intensity, trauma, attitude, over-communication and otherness, are all used as power vessels to challenge the dominant normative behaviours.

Cindy Islam gifts a parallel space for Britishness to evolve beyond its paralysing stagnancy.

Artist: Cindy Islam
Lighting Designer: Siobhan Lawson
Video Editor: Fi Nicholson
Sound artist: Urban feral 

With special thanks to my Iraqi parents who have struggled with coming to, and being in, this country.