In this episode we talk to Mumbai-based artist and UCLA assistant professor Sahej Rahal, whose practice spans sculpture, video games, AI simulations, film, and painting. Starting from three excerpts of Rahal's text Hallucination Stream we discuss how the micro-fictions of Simulation, Story and Rumour explore caste as a mythology sustained through narrative, hallucination, and political performance. Across the conversation, Rahal reflects on ghosts, digital folklore, cooperative gaming, and the role of art in confronting systems of power.

This mini-series is commissioned by the Henry Moore Institute @henrymooreinstitute as a part of their program for their exhibition Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, open 15th May - 30th August 2026.

Bio;

Sahej Rahal (born 1988, Mumbai, India) is an artist and assistant professor of Design Media Arts at, UCLA. Rahal is primarily a storyteller. He creates counter-mythologies that interrogate narrations of the present. This myth world takes the shape of sculptures, performances, films, paintings, installations, video games, and AI simulation programs. Drawing upon folklore, prophecies, archaeological conspiracies, hidden histories, and occult manuscripts, he renders scenarios where the fictive and the real begin to converse, at the borderlines of myth and memory.

Voice actor Nivedita Nair

Sound designer John Trevaskis

Broadcast through @rtm.fm

Artist @sahejrahal 

Host @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards @niamhschmidtke 

Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v

www.futureartefactsfm.com