Composition for the unrealized Governor’s Palace is a multi-channel audio work by MFA Candidate Shobun Baile that is divided between loudspeakers, headphones, and the movement of the listener. Guests are invited to put on headphones and follow an aural path through the simulated acoustic space of a planned but unbuilt modernist palace.

After the partition of Pakistan and India, Indian Prime Minister Jawarhalal Nehru invited famed French architect Le Corbusier to help design the buildings and the urban plan for the new capital city of the state of Punjab. The Governor’s Palace was the only building that was rejected by Nehru, its planned location and form were deemed “undemocratic.” But for Le Corbusier, the palace design was already a compromise, a melding of his beloved rectilinear form with the curves found in the symbol for the divine word, Om.

In place of the Governor’s Palace, Le Corbusier designed the Open Hand Monument, a towering sculpture of a hand that rotates with the wind. He described this hand as “open to receive the wealth that the world has created, to distribute to the peoples of the world…it ought to be the symbol of our age.”