Umabeecroft (performer, videoartist, director of The Riyaz Master Video Project) belongs to the experimental videoart and electronic music label Future Ethnic Comparative Research.
She has performed in different events in Istanbul, Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore , Paris, the Thailand New Media Arts Festival06, Bangkok, Barcelona, Berlin...
At present, Umabeecroft is studying a MA Fine Arts and touring her last project: THE RIYAZ MASTER VIDEO.
The "RIYAZ MASTER PROJECT" is an experimental non narrative road movie filmed in India by Umabeecroft. This video approaches an abstract and futuristic vision of the complex matrix called indian nation.
From Auroville to Kolkata and from Varanasi to Bhopal looking for the context in production of the RIYAZ MASTER, the electronic tabla machine which inspires the whole RIYAZ project. Our former research around the old industrial landscapes and the fertile and dirty environments led us to imagine the possibilities of the development of a future India, playing with fictional and real elements --inspired by the local cultural, economic and spiritual context that we discovered on our voyage . Some of the sequences we have filmed include: to Aghori Nauminath, member of an extremely secretive sect of Hinduism, at a sacred lake mentioned in the Mahabharata and along the Ganga river which texture gave us the general atmosphere for this hybrid project; the rests of Durga idols- the supreme goddess, embodiment of femenine and creative energy (Shakti)- inmersed in the water along the Hooghly river in Kolkata and the Matrimandir- the spiritual centre of the international community in Auroville.