The Forgotten March
2022
Karachi Biennale
In the fall of 2022, Amin conducted a workshop over a period of two months with students from Karachi’s Narayan Jagannath Vaidya High School (NJV). Fifty pupils showed up for the open call. Amin eventually narrowed this down to a dozen boys and girls, age 14 to 17, all of whom were boarders from interior Sindh, which had just been devastated by unprecedented floods. Amin divided them into two groups: movement and sound. He positioned both batches, wearing almost Hellenistic helmets and other objects that he had created, on and around a line of plywood plinths covered in gleaming tin. The idea was to elevate them to the status of heroes. Amin, who performed alongside the children and four of their teachers, wanted them all to bond through this imagining of fantastical childhood games. One boy repeatedly jumped over another. Another boy climbed a tall ladder, stretching his arms wide once he reached the top. A girl and a boy revolved around one another, dancing, punching the air, throwing pigment. Dimly lit by black lights hanging from trees, the overwhelming impression of Forgotten March was one of sound. This was created by what Amin came to call The Memory Orchestra. The organist and tabla player were music teachers at the school. The other members of the ensemble were students at the NJV: Three girls sang a wordless melody; two boys jammed on acoustic guitars; two other boys screamed periodically. Amin referred to this as “un-music.” He wanted the teachers to unlearn their music, the students to improvise at will. Throughout his performance trajectory, Amin has engaged with sound, sometimes prerecording his own, sometimes asking professional musicians to perform classical South Asian pieces or create their own electronic compositions. This, however, was the first time he had conducted a live orchestra. Forgotten March took place at the NJV for the opening of the third Karachi Biennale. The audience moved around the performers, aloft on their plinths in a vertical format, enveloped in sound.
