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Elaine Mitchener presents Metal Mark Time, a newly commissioned vocal performance based on the artist’s personal connections to Tower Hamlets, and inspired by the tuning of cast metal bells from The Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Globally renowned for casting some of history’s most famous bells, including the Liberty Bell and Big Ben, the foundry was Britain’s oldest manufacturing company, operating for over four centuries before its closure in 2017. The performance is informed by Mitchener’s research undertaken in the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives and follows previous vocal projects including Sweet Tooth (2020) and Solo Throat (2024).

This event is the third in a public programme series curated by researcher, writer and sound practitioner Syma Tariq.

Saturday 18 April, 3pm
Auto Italia
www.autoitaliasoutheast.org

Public programme
March–June 2026

Developed in conjunction with Zahra Malkani’s forthcoming exhibition, Noorani Metal Sound, Auto Italia is pleased to present Metal on Metal, an extended public programme curated by researcher, writer, and sound practitioner Syma Tariq.

Comprising talks, workshops, playlisting and performance, the series explores and interrogates the conceits that assume listening as a mode of liberation. Through archival tracing, modes of improvisation, signal and movement capture, epistemic breakages and vocal versioning, Metal on Metal gathers at the sharp edges of memory and sonic materiality.

With: Zahra Malkani, Mariam Elnozahy, Elaine Mitchener, Nijjor Manush (represented by Fatima Rajina and Hajera Begum), Shortwave Collective (represented by Hannah Kemp-Welch and Lisa Hall), Zoe Samudzi, Fatima Lahham, Bint Mbareh and Syma Tariq.

Dr Syma Tariq is a researcher, writer and sound practitioner based in London. Drawing on feminist politics and theory, colonial a/temporality and audio archiving experiments, she is interested in the relationship listening has to time, violence, and knowledge systems both extractive and spiritual. She completed her PhD project ‘Partitioned Listening‘ at the Centre for Research into Sound Arts Practice (Crisap), UAL in 2023 and is currently working with ECHO, Free University Brussels. Her pedagogical work encompasses teaching, workshops, and talks in public, artistic and academic settings.

Syma’s artistic commissions include Delay Lines (Tower Hamlets Local Library and Archives, 2023) and A Thousand Channels (Colomboscope festival, 2015/2021–24). Partitioned Listening has been presented in The Contemporary Journal, World Records, BL79 Tunis and the anthologies Pakistan Desires (Duke University Press, 2023) and Bodies of Sound (Silver Press, 2024). She has recently co-written her first piece for theatre, Unheard: a live radio play, performed at the National Council of Arts, Islamabad in 2025.

More info on Metal on Metal:
www.autoitaliasoutheast.org