Explore Pathways

Dhun

The Fires of the Name (I)

by Kanika Pruthi, Piyush Kukrety and Borayin Larios

Dhun

The Fires of the Name (I)

by Kanika Pruthi, Piyush Kukrety and Borayin Larios

Dhun / Dhūnī – The Fires of the Name is the digital companion to a physical installation exploring how mantras move across media and senses. Conceived through fieldwork (2025-2026), exhibited in April and May 2026, the two installation trace how engages multiples senses, and mediates relations of authority, discipline, and devotion. These reflexive multimedia essays are developed as digital extensions to the physical space, to add context and explanation, and to render the installation more visible beyond the venues in Vienna and Paris.

Whereas Dhūnī reflects on the austerities of the ascetic body, Dhun turns to the popular material culture of the Name. Here, the mantra of Rāma appears in the vibrant textures of everyday devotion. Japamālās, posters, printed repetitions of the Name, textiles, and other devotional objects demonstrate how the mantra circulates through homes, temples, and public spaces.

Dhūnī

The Fires of the Name (II)

by Prema Goet and Daniela Bevilacqua

Dhūnī

The Fires of the Name (II)

by Prema Goet and Daniela Bevilacqua

Dhun / Dhūnī – The Fires of the Name is the digital companion to a physical installation exploring how mantras move across media and senses. Conceived through fieldwork (2025-2026), exhibited in April and May 2026, the two installations trace how mantras engage multiples senses, and mediates relations of authority, discipline, and devotion. These reflexive multimedia essays are developed as digital extensions to the physical space, to add context and explanation, and to render the installation more visible beyond the venues in Vienna and Paris.

Dhūnī reimagines the five fires of austerity (pañcatāpas) practiced by Rāmānandī ascetics, a yogic discipline in which practitioners meditate surrounded by ritual fires. The installation invites visitors to experience the dhun of the Name as vibration, repetition, and presence. In this setting, the body appears as a medium of mantra, where breath, sound, and heat converge in practices of discipline and transformation.

Sounding the Goddess

Associated Rituals of kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘

by Lucy May Constantini

Sounding the Goddess

Associated Rituals of kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘

by Lucy May Constantini

Sounding the Goddess is a series of soundscapes edited from field recordings made at two sites in Kerala during October and November 2025. Some come from kaḷaripūja at CVN Kalari Sangham at East Fort in Thiruvananthapuram, in particular the ritual called Bhagavati sēva (offering to the goddess Bhagavati). This elaborate rite is performed on the ninth night of the annual navarātri festival, a high point of the kaḷari year. Other recordings are drawn from the Śrïvidyā rituals offered in the family home of Hindustan Kalari Sangham in Kozhikode. Performed three times a day in the household pūja room, they are, mostly unseen, understood to support, purify and enliven the kaḷari, its activities and community.

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Sketching Sacred Soundspace

Soundmaps of the Kataragama Temple Complex

by Tom Peterson

Sketching Sacred Soundspace

Soundmaps of the Kataragama Temple Complex

by Tom Peterson

The multi-religious Kataragama temple complex in southeastern Sri Lanka forms one of the country’s most significant and sonically rich religious sites. Consisting of more than twenty temples and shrines—many of which sit within earshot of one another—Kataragama’s religious diversity creates a shared and negotiated sonic environment in which sounds that might otherwise be heard in isolation are frequently heard simultaneously. This resource presents a series of interactive digital soundmaps developed with participants, helping to convey how they as attendees, workers, or officiants at the temple complex perceive and listen to Kataragama’s dense multi-religious sonic environment. The maps allow users to see and hear Kataragama according to participants’ perspectives, while also intimating wider insights around the place of sound in overlaps between Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Adivasi religious practices in Sri Lanka more broadly.

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