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LABOUR is the collaborative project of Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander, whose compositions and performances center the transformative potential of sound. Trained in molecular biology, Hatam works primarily with SuperCollider, a complex platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition that is a language unto itself. Colin Hacklander is a percussionist, drummer and composer, with a background in post-tonal theory and electronic music. Together, LABOUR compose ambitious and reverently experimental audioworks. Their practice promotes active listening and a heightened sensory awareness.

Working as a duo since 2013, Hatam and Hacklander founded the project LABOUR in 2018 with their debut work next time, die consciously (بیگانگی), an “erratic and stirring ” performance which closed the festival program at Berlin Atonal. Since 2018, the duo has been developing their novel format, sonic activations; a method of presenting architectural space through sound, typically in a rigorously sequenced sonic parcours. The approach highlights the interactions of localized sounds with physical space and brings listeners attention to the interactions of both human and non-human actors in their given time and place. LABOUR’s first presentation of sonic activation took place at the Messeplatz for Art Basel in 2018.

In 2019, the duo premiered the piece nine-sum sorcery with singer Hani Mojtahedy, “a musical ritual of summoning. Dark dystopian sounds meet the drama of traditional Persian melodies and poetry .” released on their own label called Studio LABOUR on November 26th, 2020. The album has been reviewed in The Wire, being described as "(...) an agonising depiction of strife, grief and pain that blends traditional and contemporary music into an operatic montage " and given 4.5/5 stars in Rolling Stone Germany.

In 2022, LABOUR presented sungazing at the X100 festival in Berlin as "an ode to the one who pursues an experimental lifestyle – an ode to the avant-garde ”; The Wire describes the piece “a central performance, sungazing by the group LABOUR, sums up the scale and power of the weekend. With sprawling allusions to Greek mythology, Zoroastrianism, social rituals and techno hedonism …”. The piece is a hybridization of the concert situation combined with the duo’s ‘sonic activation’ format .With the various ensembles involved (string, percussion, voice, visuals, dancers) we are setting in motion processes both spatial and stochastic, and super-imposing them according to the score ”. The first iteration was a large-scale work including 50 performers at Kraftwerk Berlin for the X100 Festival; the second was for Hebbel am Ufer featuring, two solo performers and video.

Since 2020, LABOUR has had a monthly show on NTS, which has featured Souleymane Faye, Coumba Gawlo and Thione Seck, as well as other guests and friends from Dakar. The show contains a mixture of progressive electronic music with heavy sabar drum music, classic & current Mbalax, and Sufi praises.

Additional projects have included a long-term collaboration with GmbH, a community-driven fashion brand born on Berlin's dance floors. LABOUR has produced original music for three of the fashion brand’s latest runway shows: Welt am Draht (AW21), White Noise (SS22) and Talisman (AW22).

History
Affecting figures in the avant-garde and experimental music scenes of Berlin, LABOUR’s founders, Colin Hacklander and Farahnaz Hatam, debuted as an artistic partnership under the name Hacklander/Hatam in 2013, with a piece titled Warsounds; a work commissioned for the ERTZ #14 Festival in Bera, Spain. The piece was created alongside a text providing the theoretical basis for Warsounds and includes Hacklander and Hatam’s first declaration of a creative partnership,

“We hereby commence our union as a working duo project using sound, situation, physical exertion & theoretical bases to pursue elusively didactic efforts towards achieving an eventual practical implementation of meta-jurisprudence .”

In addition to the formation of Hacklander/Hatam (a spontaneous move taking place on New Years Eve, 2013, in Moscow), Hacklander and Hatam worked together to run the N.K. Projekt ,* an artist-run, independent & non-profit organization in Berlin dedicated to Sound Arts. The space was co-founded by Hatam in 2008, alongside Julian Percy, and was co-directed by Hacklander. The space provided a platform for discussing paradigm and problematics in music, embracing philosophy and critical theory through an ongoing reading group led by the artists ; members of the reading group known to respond to the texts through embodied performances.

Origins of the Name
The name LABOUR is inspired in part by an early definition of Marx that gives ontological significance to the realm of work, as articulated by the philosopher Christopher J. Arthurs, defining labour as “the ontologically fundamental productive activity in and through which one becomes what one is.” The influence of Arthurs’ definition acts as a throughline in the methodology of the duo's works.