Khoj Khabar (Volume 9) by Khoj International Artists' Association

JANUARY 2020-DECEMBER 2021

(to) search, hunt, explore, discover, discern, seek, inquire, trace, track, research, investigate. Khoj is an autonomous not-for-profit contemporary arts organisation based in New Delhi. Through our programmes we support and incubate emerging, experimental and transdisciplinary creative practices and pedagogies. Since our inception in 1997, we have been committed towards building global networks and solidarities, especially in the subcontinent. We believe that art is of intrinsic value to society; it is a crucial form of inquiry that provides unique insights and drives change through affect.

Director’s Note

Khoj turns 25 this year– a milestone that would not have been possible without the support of the art community. We have only made it this far because of our supporters, well wishers and the people who we have worked with in various capacities. We want to start this year by acknowledging their love and support. It has been a long journey, mostly exciting and seldom disappointing. We made new friends and expanded our networks as we went along. When Khoj began in 1997, it was an annual event, a workshop which was started by artists. It has now grown into an organisation with its own building which has artist studios, a residency space, office space and a cafe. Over the years, it has established itself as a platform for creative practitioners to experiment and expand the boundaries of their practice. Our programmes have created transdisciplinary synapses and have pioneered a diverse range of artistic practices. As we take stock of the last two years which have been unlike any other, we are struck by how, despite the challenges, this unforeseen pandemic-induced pause has been a generative moment for us to reflect on our role as a contemporary arts organisation in society. We are also deeply grateful for the support we have received in the form of emergency grants from The Ford Foundation, Goethe-Institut and Saffron Art. As the pandemic became a time of precarity for the already marginalised, we felt it was of paramount importance to, in turn, support our immediate communities. We exist in community; the work we do would be meaningless without the reciprocity it creates with our immediate neighbours in Khirkee as well as with the

larger art fraternity. As the lockdown created havoc in Khirkee, Khoj identified 100 families (over 500 individuals) in Khirkee and supported them by distributing ration and basic medical amenities during the lockdown. To honour our longstanding commitment to early-career artists and creative practitioners, we rolled out the Khoj Support Grant 2020, through which we supported 80 artists and artisans from across India. Alongside this grant, through our Khoj Support Network, we facilitated conversations between a network of established practitioners and early-career artists who were seeking guidance and feedback on their portfolios, artist statements and overall art practice. As we venture into our 25th year, Khoj’s programming continues to engage with two questions: What does art do? What can art be? Over the last two years, our focus has been on thinking about art as a crucial form of inquiry—one which poses difficult questions and uses its affective power to drive change. Peripheries & Crossovers: Art as Social Practice, our three-year-long, multi-city program of socially-engaged projects delved into questions of gender, urban flux and cultural norms across India, at a time when gendered precarities were further accentuated by the ongoing pandemic. Under our other three-year programme, Does the Blue Sky Lie? we embarked upon a sustained inquiry into our 7

atmosphere, commissioning 8 long-duration projects that use public engagement by artists, architects, spatial researchers and game-designers to prompt action against Delhi’s toxic air. As screens began to mediate our interactions with the rest of the world, we picked up on a thread that had been initiated with the Aesthetic Warfare symposium held in collaboration with Digital Earth in 2019. un{stacked}— articulations of the algorithmic condition, a residency culminating in an exhibition at Khoj, brought together works exposing and reconfiguring centralised networked structures; speculating strategies and simulating solutions to capture the shifting categories of truth. Khoj is deeply committed to creating a learning space for artists and audiences alike, where learning occurs through practice, conversations, and structured pedagogical programmes. After a yearlong hiatus, we reimagined the 17th edition of our flagship residency for young and emerging artists, Peers, as a hybrid programme. Studio visits and workshops occurred online, culminating in an onsite Open Day at Khoj, complemented by a digital viewing room. In 2021, Khoj completed the fourth edition of Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) – with a two-week intensive programme for young curators from across South Asia and Iran unfolding online, under the tutelage of Shuddabrata Sengupta and Latika Gupta and 16 other distinguished Indian and International guest lecturers. With the intellectual and financial support of the Goethe-Institut in India, the CISA programme is fast establishing itself as an important curatorial training ground for young/ emerging curators in South Asia.

While the artist and art making has been central to Khoj, its pioneering art management programme, ArThinkSouthAsia (ATSA), which builds capacity for cultural organisations by training cultural practitioners in south Asia and Iran, released an Evaluation report on ATSA’s 10 year journey. Commissioned by the British Council, the report described the transformative impact ATSA has had on individuals, in terms of enhancing their management skills, increasing confidence, broadening their perspectives and giving them a wider network of contacts beyond national boundaries. In March 2021, we also had a wonderful online celebration of ATSA’s 10th anniversary, with Fellows tuning in from across the region, reminiscing their days from the residential programme and sharing their hopes for the future of the arts! As 2021 drew to a close, we unveiled Khoj’s state of the art new website with a newly updated brand identity. Khoj’s new visual identity brings our unique curatorial lens to the fore. The ‘Khoj Eye’ searches for emerging art practices, which has always been at the centre of Khoj’s endeavours. The now-iconic Khoj logo has been updated to meet contemporary demands. The site serves as a rich repository that archives 25 years of programmes at Khoj. It reflects Khoj’s emphasis on creating synapses between art and other disciplines and thematics, focusing on key thematics such as ecology, community engagement and socially-engaged art practice. Our present programming can now be seen in the context of our past, tracing curatorial threads through the years. Khoj now looks towards its next chapter. Pooja Sood January 2022 9

CONTENT Monitor 13: Dance on My Head and Scratch My Heart Times, Lines, 1989s Exhibition by Chto Delat The Lens and a Shadow: Who is a Dalit? Public Talk by Bezwada Wilson What Are You To Me?—The Histories of Queer Futures Covid Relief in Khirkee ARThink South Asia (ATSA) Khoj Support Grant 2020 Resiliart: Artists and Creativity Beyond Crisis Khoj Support Network Peripheries & Crossovers: Art as Social Practice Does The Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities Khoj X TBA21 on st_age

NTS January 2020

January–February 2020

February 2020

April & July 2020

April- May 2020

May–June 2020

May 2020

June–September 2020

September 2020–August 2021

October 2020–February 2022

September–October 2020

CONTENT Acts of Transmission: Partout—Live Arts Workshop Swiss Edition On Air: Webinar by Dr. Awadhendra Sharan & Dr. Rohit Negi Yesterday. Today. Everyday. Safarnama by Saraab Special Grants African Caravan by Shikhant Sablania Peripheries & Crossovers: Art As Social Practice ATSA’s 10th Anniversary Book Reading and Soundscape: we are opposite like that Work in Process

NTS October 2020

October 2020

November 2020

December 2020

December 2020–December 2021

December 2020–June 2021

January–December 2021

March 2021

March–April 2021

CONTENT The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan by Abhishek Hazra Monitor 14: Drifting with the Summer Tides Peers 2021 Free/Dem Media Training Program by Ideosync Restricted Fixations by Renuka Rajiv Khoj Support Grant 2021 Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) Residential Intensive 2021 On Air: Webinar by Disha Shetty un{stacked}: articulations of the algorithmic condition Khoj Website Launch

NTS July 2021

July–August 2021

August–October 2021

August–December 2021

September – December 2021

October 2021 (Ongoing)

November 2021

November–December 2021

December 2021

104

Times,Lines, 1989s 29 January–29 February 2020 Exhibition at Khoj Studios Mural by Chto Delat artist Nikolay Oleynikov for the Times, Lines, 1989s exhibition at Khoj Studios

“Writing and rewriting history into a single timeline is an impossible task. There is no single version of history, and it is clear that any construction of a timeline holds a relationship to its author.”

Chto Delat (What is to be done?) is a collective of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers founded in early 2003 in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. The collective organises art projects, seminars and public campaigns that can take the form of videos, plays, radio programmes, 16 posters and murals.

Times, Lines, 1989s, explored how people register themselves in relation to recent history while examining how to build alternative historical narratives collectively. Questions and politics are at the forefront of Chto Delat’s work, which believes that if political and social transformation is to be made possible, we need to consciously understand the forces of transformation and their effects. The exhibition consisted of film works, texts, prints, and textiles, which connected to activist struggles and places of culture. The aim was to create new citations and stories which build a discourse on alternate futures and how to refuse existing narratives. A key part of the space was a History Production Station – an ongoing performative workshop space that provided tools for challenging accepted histories, authority, and linear experience. This was one of the mechanisms through which

Dmitry Vilensky is an artist and educator based in St. Petersburg who co-founded Chto Delat in 2003. He works mostly in the framework of interdisciplinary collective practices in mediums of video, photography, text, installations and social interactions, and has participated in many international and Russian exhibitions. Nikolay is a St. Petersburg based artist and member of Chto Delat. His practice looks at the materiality and visual reach of the culture of mourning, circus and cabaret / burlesque. Nikolay is known for his didactic murals and graphic works within the tradition of the Soviet monumental school, surrealist-like imagery and punk cultures.

people were encouraged to contribute their timelines to the main project. Chto Delat members Dmitry Vilensky and Nikolay were present at Khoj to produce the Times, Lines, 1989s Khoj edition. This exhibition was a collateral event of the India Art Fair which was held from 30 January to 02 February 2020.

Details from the exhibition 18 at Khoj

Details from the exhibition 20 at Khoj

Khoj presented a series of Public Talks and Lectures as part of the larger programme under Times, Lines, 1989s. Activists and art practitioners were invited to hold discourse on identities whose histories have been relatively marginalised.

Bezwada Wilson, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee, is leading a nationwide movement to abolish the dehumanizing practices of manual scavenging through his organization, Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA). Sudharak Olwe, a Mumbai-based photojournalist since 1988 has worked as a press photographer with some of the leading newspapers in India. In 2016, Sudharak was conferred the Padma Shri Award. Beena Pallical has been passionately working towards policy changes within Central and State governments for the development of Dalit and Adivasi community. Rajyashri Goody attempts to decode and make visible instances of everyday power and resistance within Dalit communities through writing, ceramics, photography, and sculptural works. Jyotsna Siddharth is deeply interested in Intersectionality, Inclusivity, and Diversity debates and their interlinkages with Caste, Race, Gender, Sexualities, Disabilities, Mental 22 Health, and Queerness.

The Lens & a Shadow: Who is a Dalit? 13 February 2020 Public Talk at Khoj Studios

Khoj hosted a lecture by activist Bezwada Wilson, with interventions by photographer Sudharak Olwe, artist Rajyashri Goody and, actor, anti-caste activist, feminist, and writer Jyotsna Siddharth. The talk, moderated by Dalit rights activist Beena Pallical, where panelists discussed activist narratives of politics through Sudharak Olwe’s image-making was followed by Jyotsna Siddharth’s performance of Rajyashri Goody’s writing recipes.

Ramon Magsaysay awardee Bezwada Wilson along with Beena Pallical and Jyotsna Siddharth, address the crowd to discuss Dalit rights and caste politiics.

Attendees listen to a lecture by Bezwada Wilson during The Lens and a Shadow: Who is a Dalit? event.

What Are You To Me?— The Histories Of Queer Futures Details from Aryakrishnan’s Sweet Maria Monument pop-up installation during Chto Delat exhibition at Khoj.

29 February 2020 Public Talk at Khoj Studio Vqueeram Aditya Sahai is a gender non-conforming writer and independent academic based in Delhi. They are interested in sex, feeling, and the structure and narrative of living in their relation with forms of sociality, law and politics. Aryakrishnan is a researcher, artist, curator, and activist. His art practice focuses on building queer dialogue in spaces where such subjects are silenced. Navaneetha Mokkil’s areas of research and teaching include feminist politics in India, print and visual culture, and public 24 formations of sexuality.

Khoj invited poet, writer, researcher and queer activist, Vqueeram Aditya Sahai, artist Aryakrishnan, and writer and scholar Navaneetha Mokkil for an evening of discussion and interventions around the everyday politics of gendered systems and lives. The talk was accompanied by a pop-up of Aryakrishnan’s Sweet Maria Monument, an ode to Maria, a trans person who was murdered for being an activist.

Queer activist, Vqueeram Aditya Sahai in conversation with Aryakrishnan and Navaneetha Mokkil

The Pandemic Turn

The COVID-19 pandemic had an abrupt and extraordinary impact on the arts and cultural sector across nations. The global health crisis and the uncertainty resulting from it profoundly affected Khoj and the artists and organisations that it has long supported. By March 2020, Khoj’s physical space was indefinitely closed and all in-situ exhibitions, showcases, talks, residencies, and events stood cancelled or postponed. While grappling with the unprecedented challenges the pandemic posed, Khoj felt a deep sense of responsibility towards the community it serves and as a socially-inclined arts organisation, realised the need to orient itself to look both inward and outward. As Khoj prepared to inhabit the hybrid world, the divide between those with and without digital access and resources became clearer and deeper. In response, Khoj made intensive efforts and undertook several initiatives to provide necessary services to its neighbours and the artist community. Khoj began with understanding and addressing the needs of the immediate community it inhabits and distributed ration to Khirkee’s residents. Furthermore, to support cultural professionals and institutions, and maintain working on vital projects with minimal resources, Khoj initiated the Khoj Support Grant, Khoj Support Network, participated in the ResiliArt webinars by UNESCO, and held several conversations with ATSA fellows to provide alternative digital resources and strengthen solidarity across the South Asian artist community.

Covid Relief In Khirkee Women carry bags of ration distributed by Khoj during the initial months of the pandemic.

23 April & 24 July 2020

The nationwide lockdown owing to the Covid-19 pandemic created a colossal crisis in Khirkee, which has a huge population of migrant labourers, refugees, and students. During those challenging times and seeing the misery of Khirkee’s residents, Khoj felt a deep sense of responsibility towards the immediate community in which it is embedded. Khoj identified 100 families (over 500 individuals) and supported them by distributing ration and basic medical amenities during the lockdown. The Covid-19 relief drive in Khirkee was supported by Khoj and The Ford Foundation, New Delhi.

Khoj Support Grant 2020–2021

Artwork by Abin Sreedharan.

The pandemic has ruptured all sense of well-being and normalcy for everyone across the globe and young artists and artisans in India have been thoroughly affected by it. To offer our support during the unprecedented times of the pandemic, Khoj rolled out the Khoj Support Grant 2020-2021, through which we supported 80 artists and artisans from across India.

Detail from Dinesh Chippa’s fadat hand block 30 natural dye on cotton.

Meghna Patpatia’s Suspirium-Submarine helmet.

Year – 1 5 May – 20 June 2020 To honour Khoj’s long-standing commitment to early-career artists and creative practitioners, Khoj announced the Khoj Support Grant 2020 for artists who suffered due to the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic. Promising a modest sum of INR 25000 each, the grant supported 40 artists from across India, thereby enabling them to stay engaged with their practice and support themselves during the lockdown. At the end of six months, the artists could showcase their work in any way they chose. The Jury consisted of Latika Gupta, Rohini Devasher and the Khoj Team.

Selected Artists Sumantra Sardar, Shibayan Halder, Suvojit Roy, Soham Chakraborty, Madhurjya Dey, Dhrubajit Sarma, Binoy Paul, Balaram Koley, Subhankar Chakraborty, Abhijit Deb Nath, Mousumi Karmakar, Reshma Khatoon, Abin Sreedharan, Raja Somadula, Ritika Sharma, Ritesh Khowal, Robin Joy, Sanjib Kalita, Vishwanath Kuttum, Deepak Yadav, Pavan Ganesh Kavitkar, Sanjib Barui, Avinash Bhishnurkar, Kapil Jangid, Umesh Singh, Puja Mondal, Gurjeet Singh, Mucharla Madhukar, Satyaranjan Das, Supriyo Karmakar, Sukhmani Kohli, Jithin T Joy, Bikash Chandra Senapati, Mohammad Intiyaz, Devidas Agase, Meghna Patpatia, Shubham Kumar, Mayadhara Sahu, Tanaya Kundu, Pramod Kumar.

Year – 2 September – December 2021 We feel that the pandemic has particularly been harsh on those communities who were already in the margins. Artisans and craftspeople across India have been continuously marginalised and exploited for their skills by larger corporations. To add to this, lack of opportunities like public fairs, cancellation of existing orders, their remote locations and inaccessibility to markets and the digital world have added to their dismal plight. Given the fragility of this sector and the imminent threat to the survival of the indigenous art and craft practices and their makers, Khoj used its resources to reach out to artists and artisan communities in remote parts of India whose lives and livelihoods were severely impacted due to the pandemic. Through the support of the International Relief Fund 2021 from the Goethe-Institut, Khoj was able to initiate the second edition of the Khoj Support Grant 2021. Khoj supported 40 artisans, musicians, folk artists and craftspeople from remote areas with a sum of Rs. 25,000 each to help them source raw materials in order to continue with their work.

Selected Practitioners Abdul Jabbar A. Manonmani, A. Chelladurai, A. Parasuraman, Akshita Gangwal, C. Selvamani, Chandru Gurusamy, Chellaiah Pandiyan, Dinesh Chhipa, G. Venkatesan, Ganesan, I. Ananda Babu, J. Shankar Narayanan, Jaisingh Nageswaran, Kasam Khan, K. E. Rajinikanth, L. Kalinuthu, Magi Bai, M. Settu, M. Murugan, Manimaran Magizhini, Muniaraj, Najaru Khan, N. Durai, P. Anbu, P. Nagaraj, P. Ponraj, P. Ramakrishnan, Preeti Khandelwal, R. Jeyakumar, Ravi Raj, R.Velmurugan, S. Alageswari, Sattar Khan, S. Venkatesan, Saran Raj, T. Gubendiren, T. Loganathan, T. Venkatesan, Tejashree Ratankumar Ingawale.

Artwork by Puja Mondal.

Wooden printing blocks 34 made by Dinesh Chhipa.

Photograph by J. Shankar Narayanan.

Artwork by Mohd Intiyaz.

Resiliart: Artists and Creativity Beyond Crisis

21 May 2020 Webinar

The health crisis brought on by the novel coronavirus had been unprecedented in its impact on lives, livelihoods, and our socio-economic-cultural situation. To offer support and agency during the initial months of the pandemic, Khoj helped formulate ResiliArt-India, a series of webinars by UNESCO New Delhi, jointly organised by the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), The Marg Foundation, and Natya Chetana. The webinars were dedicated to raising awareness about the far-reaching consequences of COVID-19 across the sector and mobilising support from various organisations ranging from public to private during the crisis. The aim was to focus on immediate relief for artists, recovery mechanisms, and resilience plans. 36

Khoj Support Network June – September 2020 Digital Engagement

Selected Artists Arindam Manna, Vipin Singh, Surabhi Maurya, Dhaivat Shah, Dipankar Panging, Durgaprasad Bandi, Dipanwita Saha, Nakul Patel, Devadeep Gupta, Urvi Sethna, Mohammad Sameer Khan, Nikita Teresa Sarkar, Ashima Raizada, Urna Sinha, Ramneet Kaur, Nehal Verma, Ritesh Khowal, Gautam Doshi, Abhishek Pandey, Payal Arya, Harmeet Rattan, Ritaban Ghosh, Ankita Kashyap, Mitul Kajaria, Ravi Kumar, Ananya Dalal, Anisha Chaudhary, Yashwant Singh, Nitheen Ramalingam, Parul Sharma, Astha Gandhi, Maitri Das, Kajal Kashyap, Jyoti Bansal, Anjali Madhu, Anshu Garg, Sumantra Sardar, Shibayan Halder, Suvojit Roy, Soham Chakraborty.

Imagined as a parallel programme to the Khoj Support Grant, Khoj Support Network facilitated online conversations between a network of established art practitioners/ curators and early-career artists who were seeking guidance and feedback on their portfolios, artist statements and overall art practice. The Support Network that consisted of: Rohini Devasher, Jiten Thukral, Sumir Tagra, Zuleikha Chaudhari, Vishal K Dar, Asim Waqif, Latika Gupta, Sabih Ahmed, Radha Mahendru, Sohrab Hura and the Khoj Team, worked as interlocutors and reviewers with groups of younger artists.

Work in Process 20 March–20 April 2021 Showcase at Khoj Studios

Artwork by Mitul Kajaria

As the number of cases started declining post the first wave of the pandemic, allowing for a cautious opening of physical spaces, Khoj hosted a month-long viewing of works by several emerging artists as part of The Khoj Support Network programme. The works were built, discussed, and reflected upon in conversations between a group of artists from the network and Sohrab Hura, who as an interlocutor, was in dialogue with the artists and helped them work towards the showcase at Khoj.

Contributing Artists Anjali Madhu, Ashima Raizada, Dipankar Panging, Dipanwita Saha, Gautam Doshi, Mitul Kajaria, Nakul Patel, Ravi Kumar, Ritaban Ghosh, 38 Vipin Singh.

Vision board shared by the artists.

Artwork by Dipanwita Saha.

Artwork by Mitul Kajaria.

Artwork by Ravi Kumar

Detail from Ashima Raizada’s artwork.

Artwork by Rituban Ghosh.

Artwork by Ashima Raizada.

Special Grants 2020–2021

Detail from African Caravan by Shikhant Sablania.

Along with the Khoj Support Grants, Khoj also supported two artist projects—the African Caravan web-comic by Shikhant Sablania and two issues of Renuka Rajiv’s subscription based zine Restricted Fixations. In both cases the medium of self publication becomes a site for an episodic art practice to emerge that allows for subscription based audience building. African Caravan By Shikhant Sablania December 2020 – June 2021 Webcomic

Shikhant Sablania is an illustrator, artist, and storyteller who weaves stories through his art, comics, and design. He creates and publishes books, magazines and other comics under his 42 website Choorma.

African Caravan is a Graphic Novel travelogue that has taken the form of a serialised webcomic. It is based on a road trip/art project that 12 artists from various parts of the world undertook, along the eastern coast of Africa covering ten countries from South Africa to Egypt collaborating with various local artists along the way. The project aimed to share the concept of ‘unborder’ by travelling and collaborating with local artists in Africa to create art around issues that deserve attention. The team

worked to create dialogues around race, caste, gender, pan-Africanism, neo-colonialism, and more through public artwork and performances. The comic unfolds as they drive across the continent, shedding light upon the wealth of culture, ethnicities, lives, and stories of Africa. Artist Shikhant Sablania has captured the journey in the series by portraying how each member of the group explores their individuality while forming relationships with each other and the continent. Khoj provided a seed grant that supported building the microsite which hosts the African Caravan comics. The webcomic is free and can be read on the website www.choorma.com. It is also available on other webcomic sites such as Webtoons and Tapas.

Panels from African Caravan By Shikhant Sablania.

Scan here to read more.

Detail from Renuka Rajiv’s Restricted Fixations.

Restricted Fixations By Renuka Rajiv August – December 2021 Zines

Renuka Rajiv is an artist based in Bangalore. They make art as a medium of communication with others. Rajiv’s artistic practices, centering on drawing and print, extend to include artist book, zine, papier-mache and textile in recent years. Their work engages with sexuality, gender, physicality, notions of family and relationships, 46 via personal narratives.

Restricted Fixations is a subscription based zine initiative by Bangalore based artist Renuka Rajiv. Each issue has a different theme, with 8 issues in total. This project is primarily for creative practitioners who haven’t made or included work in zines, and has 15-20 contributors per issue with a broad range of mediums and sensibilities. A response to the overwhelming move online since the ongoing covid pandemic, Restricted Fixations is a home production that began in April 2020, with two more issues yet to see completion. The artist felt the need to activate something tangible involving many contributors, collaborations, and work with the given constraints using two mediums they love—zines and post. Khoj has generously supported issues #6 (Pattern— Repetition) and #7 (Knowledge—Intelligence). While prompts were shared with each theme, contributors are

Issue #6 of Renuka Rajiv’s Restricted Fixations. Image courtesy: Ranjan De

free to respond the way they choose to. Here is a glimpse to the prompts for the two issues that Khoj has supported: Issue #6—Pattern/ Repetition obsession, music/ noise, fibonacci, routine, rhythm, monotony, irregular/ regular, mirror-neurons, predictable/ unpredictable, kolam, movement, swarm, plague. Issue #7—Knowledge/ Intelligence awareness, social, emotional, indigenous, machine learning, artificial, ancient, autism spectrum, autodidact, elder, generational, futuristic, collective, non-human, unrecognised, gut. To subscribe to Restricted Fixations by Renuka Rajiv, write to pithbull@protonmail.com.

Excerpt from Acts of Transmission Telegram Chat.

Acts of Transmission: Partout— Live Arts Workshop Swiss Edition 2–11 October 2020 International Residencies

Creative Practitioners Vicky Shahjehan, Sorour Darabi, Indranjan 48 Banerjee, Ralph Tharayil

Khoj International Artists’ Association has been a primary intercontinental partner for the LIVE ARTS WORKSHOP (LAW) series since 2018. The project is a series of collaborative professional exchange workshops that harnesses the international network of Pro Helvetia-Swiss Arts Council around the development of new work in the live arts field and new circuits for the presentation of that work. PARTOUT—Platform for International Performance Art, is a project of PANCH (Performance Art Network Switzerland) in collaboration with Arsenic Lausanne and Kaserne Basel. It invites around 30 performers from national, international, and intercontinental contexts to Switzerland for 10 days of performances, experimental sharings, and discussions. Under the rubric of LAW, Khoj was invited as a

collaborator and a participant for the PARTOUT festival in Switzerland in October 2020. Khoj participated at PARTOUT as artist advisors, curators, and writers engaging directly (and digitally) in the festival in Lausanne and Basel in October. For the New Delhi leg of LAW, Khoj supported Vicky Shahjehan, a young transgender performance artist based in Colombo, as the artist for the programme from the South Asian region. Given the curatorial thematic of Partout, “Acts of Transmission”, artist Sorour Darabi, French-Iranian performance artist/dancer, joined in as Vicky’s transmitter and collaborator, considering both the artists shared similar entry points in performance through gender and language. The collaboration between the artists translated into a “ritualistic dance act of sea healing, where two androgynous bodies come together”. Vicky produced a performance video that played on stage while Sorour was physically present as a performing body at Kaserne. Indranjan Banerjee, from Khoj, participated as a writer-in-transmission with his transmitter/collaborator, writer Ralph Tharayil based in Basel and Berlin: a digital writing collaboration; a multimedia conversation in the digital

The Acts of Transmission were seen as acts extending one context into another, in/through the digital space, creating an emergence for/of awareness and consciousness for the in-between as well as two different and parallel contexts and bodies. Since the global participants couldn’t travel because of Covid-19, each of them had a collaboration partner located in Switzerland and Central Europe who worked with them on Acts of Transmission, and were physically present at PARTOUT and mediated the joint project. Performance by Sorour Darabi in tandem with Vicky Shahjehan’s video film, at PARTOUT. Image courtesy: Kaserne, Basel.

Scan here to access the 50 Telegram conversation.

space on the topic of transmission—true to the platform’s motto “Acts of Transmission”. It aimed at incorporating the linguistic and anthropological dimensions of post-digital communication in the context of the performances, workshops and discussions taking place during PARTOUT. The conversation has taken form in a telegram chat group, inviting artists and curators from PARTOUT as well as the audience to join the group and to directly witness and discover how collaborative and textual strategies between the two writers come about. This is an invitation to tune into the nuances of translation and transposition within the act of transmission. Khoj also presented a brief context of Live Arts at Khoj through the years, to lend historicity of Live Arts in the context of one global south LAW collaborator at PARTOUT; the other presenter was Jay Pather who presented the Live Arts context in South Africa.

Engaging with Socially Engaged Art Practice and Ecology based practices has been at the center of Khoj’s long standing curatorial practice. These modes of inquiry that have, over time, developed into long-term programmes have led us to build specialised discourse, insights and re-evaluate frameworks and responsibilities of contemporary art.

Peripheries & Crossovers: Art As Social Practice 2020–2021 Socially Engaged Art Projects Constructing Homelands. Image courtesy: Stuti Pradhan.

In 2019, Khoj started Peripheries & Crossovers: Art as Social Practice, a three-year-long multicity socially engaged art programme across India to address cultural norms and narratives around gender and urbanisation. The main aim behind Peripheries & Crossovers was to support year long art projects that were artist-led, community-based, collaborative and site specific in order to draw parallels between the sort of work Khoj has been doing in its neighbourhood Khirkee, with work being done in similarly peripheral areas across India. Khoj is supporting 12 projects (2019-2021) that are addressing issues around violence against women and gender-based inequality which has been exacerbated by the impact of urbanisation in India. While we wanted to explore how public spaces were gendered across India and to examine the extent of spatial injustice, we were also certain from our own work tackling difficult questions through transdisciplinary interventions by artists and other creative practitioners, that art could navigate complex issues in a nuanced manner, often filling in gaps that are difficult to get into. It could offer more affective, speculative and expanded inroads

into asking and working through difficult questions, becoming a tool for communities to articulate visions for a more equitable future. Khoj supported 8 projects in the year 2020 & 2021. Through these distinct and diverse projects, Khoj continues to map the ecosystem of socially engaged art practice and hopes to contribute to the discourse from a South Asian perspective.

Cotton Stainers. Image courtesy: Shweta Bhattad.

Year 2—1 September 2020–30 August 2021 Creative Practitioners / Participants Baaraan Ijlal, Divya Chopra & Rwitee Mandal, Jasmeen Patheja, Sanyukta Saha, Shweta Bhattad For the year 2020, Khoj supported five new projects that focused on violence against women, gender stereotyping and effects of urbanisation on gender-based inequalities. Works Change Room Archives Baaraan Ijlal’s project Change Room Archives as part of Peripheries & Crossovers is a digital curation of previous and ongoing Change Room recordings and will focus on women and the transgender community. Change Room is an ongoing sound installation of conversations about one’s own fears, apprehensions and desires, driving change through the acts of telling, listening, and witnessing. It has been live since April, 2018 and was conceptualised as an open channel of voices telling their stories anonymously, with the artist as the witness. A self-taught artist based in Delhi, Baaraan has been interested in exploring anonymity in her practice as essential to individual liberty. She seeks to enable listening and creating witnesses to unacknowledged stories.

Fursat ki Fizayen Divya Chopra and Rwitee Mandal’s project Fursat ki Fizayen in Madan Khadar, New Delhi seeks to explore and understand the spatial realities of young, single, working women living at the margins – geographically, socially and economically – and to artistically interpret the daily negotiations and narratives of these women in reclaiming spaces in the city for leisure in their own unique ways. The enquiry will be specifically concerned with ways in which young women claim access to the site of power – the public domain – through various channels which give them back control of their own image-making. Curated stories of women, showing their presence, their strength, their resilience in contested urban spaces will capture an alternative reality of these women in public life. Such stories will be used as a means to understand and question the world as it affects women enjoying leisure. 54

Year 3—1 January–31 December 2021 Creative Practitioners / Participants Saleha Sapra & Riddhi Batra, Stuti Pradhan, Swati Janu For 2021, Khoj sustained three new projects that engaged with the ideas of gender-based discrimination in informal sectors, gender-responsive policy framework, and the need for rights-based advocacy to tackle spatial injustices Works Aao, Jagah Banaye! Saleha Sapra & Riddhi Batra’s project Aao, Jagah Banaye! is a call for action to include and empower women vendor groups working in the urban informal sector to re-imagine, reclaim and further co-create their everyday places of work. Over a period of one year, the creative practitioners Riddhi & Saleha aspire to work with daily women vendor groups, who have a direct relationship with Delhi’s urban environment and are exposed to gender-based injustice due to rapid urbanisation, systemic indifferences, and state failure to provide safe, inclusive spaces for working women groups. For marginalised female groups to be able to self-determine their accessibility, inclusivity, safety, comfort and sustainability and become agents of change by voicing stories of their struggles and burdens in the public realm is the urban change they hope to consistently engage with.

Constructing Homelands Stuti Pradhan’s project Constructing Homelands looks at how ethnography and art interventions, especially visual storytelling, can together inform a participatory and gender-responsive policy framework. Through collaborations with migrant women in informal sectors in the state of Sikkim, the project will attempt to provide a multi-perspective insight into their lives. And through this, initiate conversations between them and relevant stakeholders to create a more empathetic and inclusive approach to policy formation. Constructing Homelands is also about exploring collaborative and non-hierarchical ways of representation, bridging the gap between research and practice and allowing new imaginations and alliances to occur in unexpected spaces and situations. Stuti Pradhan’s project is carried out in collaboration with the Confluence Collective. 55

Year 2—1 September 2020–30 August 2021 Towards Feminist Futures Jasmeen Patheja’s project Towards Feminist Futures is working towards building new solidarities to shift patriarchy, initiate healing and empathy. Jasmeen Patheja has been working with members of the public and communities to end violence against women and girls since 2003. Over the years she has designed and facilitated a wide range of projects to confront narratives of fear, warnings and internalised victim blame. Her practice rests on building, documenting and archiving testimonials of sexual violence. Jasmeen’s ongoing project I Never Ask For It is building an archive of ten thousand testimonials of sexual violence to end victim blame. Through the support from Khoj, she aims to contribute to a part of this archive by building new engagements in the peri-urban context and also build local and community specific methodologies and approaches to do so. Patheja facilitates and intervenes, to build testimonials of sexual violence, confront fear narratives, arrest victim blame, initiate healing, listening and empathy. Kyun Kyun Ladki As in the story by Mahasweta Devi, that inspires the title of the project—- Kyun Kyun Ladki was started by Sanyukta Saha to address the role of education in the lives of a group of adolescent girls in two villages of the Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan. Many of the girls in the area stop going to school after grade 8, making their drop-out rate much higher than that of the boys in their villages. Urbanisation and the development of tourism has further exacerbated the situation of uneven development. The aim of the project is to create a space that is safe, that nurtures curiosity, creates the possibility to connect with their dreams, and builds into an exploration and expression of the girls’ relationships with their families and larger communities. Theatre-led integrated arts methodologies will create a space for expression, critical thinking and dialogue between the girls and the community they inhabit. Cotton Stainers Shweta Bhattad’s project Cotton Stainers is looking to create a space, which becomes a platform for expression for the women of Paradsingha. Cotton Stainer (Dysdercus cingulatus), is infamous as a common farming pest attacking and leaving the cotton-boll with stains. The whole world is focused on how to terminate it but they, like any other insect, are a vital part of our ecosystem, playing an important role in the food chain. Stain and cloth commonly don’t go with each other. Most people don’t like to wear stained cloth but each stain is actually an anecdote, that tells a story of the women and makes the cloth live, evolve and build its character over time. Right from the sowing of cotton to spinning it into yarn to hand-weaving into fabric to hand-stitching into final garments will be done by the women in this space. Shweta Bhattad’s project is carried out in collaboration with the Gram Art Project. 56

Year 3—1 January – 31 December 2021 5 Bigha Zameen Swati Janu’s project 5 Bigha Zameen aims to rethink our collective imaginations of the city and question whose rights are protected in our cities, and whose eroded. 5 bigha or 1 acre is the minimum unit of land for subsistence of the farmers of Yamuna Khadar—the eastern floodplains of Yamuna in the city. While this unit of area has been long used as a guiding principle in urban planning and utopian concepts such as the Broadacre city, it is also the basic element linking the lives, livelihoods and histories of farmers who face the imminent threat of erasure from the city. The year long engagement will focus on rights based advocacy with the women of Yamuna Khadar on one hand and creating public awareness on their valuable role in the city, on the other. Swati Janu’s project is carried out in collaboration with the Social Design Collaborative.

Constructing Homelands. Image courtesy: Stuti Pradhan.

Cotton Stainers. Image courtesy: Shweta Bhattad.

5 Bigha Zameen. Image 58 courtesy: Swati Janu.

Coproduction of terrace space, mural painting in progress as part of Fursat ki Fizayen. Image courtesy: Divya Chopra and Rwitee Mandal.

Aao Jagah Banaye. Image courtesy: Saleha Sapra and Riddhi Batra.

Cotton Stainers. Image courtesy: Shweta Bhattad.

Yesterday. Today. Everyday. November 2020 onwards Socially Engaged Art Projects

Yesterday. Today. Everyday. is an ongoing long duration intervention by Sadhna Prasad and Poornima Sukumar in collaboration with the Aravani Art Project supported by Khoj. While the visibility of transgender people is increasing in popular culture and daily life, they still face severe challenges, discrimination, stigma and systemic inequality. The transgender community is a thriving pool of human beings who are given opportunities, but none of these seem to have any tangible upliftment. The project, with its modalities of collaborating and creating along with the people from the community, ensures to excavate the wisdom they have inculcated over the years. By diving deep into their culture and traditional practices, the project examines their spaces of innovation, the places of their history and creates new spaces by transforming this knowledge into art. By bringing the nuances of trans lives, narratives and lived experiences to the forefront of their fight, we aim to embrace the people from the transgender community by creating consciousness, awareness, social participation through the arts.

Focusing and re-working to a more equitable future, the project’s research tends to slant towards documenting and capturing personal stories, history, faith, friendship, family, sisterhood, beliefs, myths and current politics from transindividuals who are the prime collaborators for this project. The research focuses on the past, present and future and by which they present Yesterday. Today. Everyday. Yesterday > explores the relevance of mythology in modern times with a series of comics/ graphic novels. It will consist of an anthology with six comics that will explore stories from the past narrated by transgender people living across India. With this exploration, the project hopes to archive cultural nuances like historical facts, traditional practices, oral stories passed from generation to generation within the transgender community. Today > explores the relevance of revolution, coming together with unheard stories of survival, love, struggles, betrayals and most importantly overcoming all the challenges that society imposes on being and becoming trans by making these into podcast episodes about trans lives in modern India.

Researchng about the festivals, traditions and some of the important spiritual gatherings for the people in the transgender community. A picture of a Jogathi in Telangana. Image courtesy: Sadhna Prasad and Poornima Sukumar.

Everyday > explores day-to-day lives and sayings from the Transgender community. The project will document potent messages from the community in the form of GIFs. With thoughts, anecdotes, satire, teases, the GIFs will have information that must be learnt and unlearnt by the masses, as we make our everyday lives trans-inclusive. The project is supported by The Ford Foundation, New Delhi.

The transgender community follow a beautiful, yet complex understanding of a family. Vishal Guru with all her beautiful daughters or chelas in Colaba, Mumbai

While we speak to transindividuals about their idea of how they found a “second life”, Karpagam shares that her solace was the sea in Chennai. Image courtesy: Aravani Art Project.

Does The Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies Of Air’s Toxicities An Elegy for Ecology. Image courtesy: Sharbendu De.

1 October 2020–28 February 2022

Creative Practitioners Nitin Bathla, Sharbendu De, Architecture for Dialogue with Salil Parekh, Bhagwati Prasad, Aditya Garg and Visual Respiration, ThinkArts, 64 Achia Anzi, Fields of View

In 2019, 1.7 million Indians died due to air pollution, while millions more suffer poor health outcomes because of it. There is an urgent need to think about the ways in which the toxicity of the atmosphere unfolds in human bodies and across hyperlocal public spaces. ‘Does the Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities’, is a three-year-long project partially funded by The Prince Claus Fund, through which Khoj is supporting art projects that engage with the idea of air and toxicity: its composition, movement, landscapes and scales of impact. In the first year of ‘Does the Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities’, seven projects by artists, spatial designers and, creative practitioners were chosen to mobilise attention to these questions and collectively reflect on the micro-encounters we have with the atmosphere by

way of testimonies of toxic air, and imagining alternate atmospheric futures. Artists / Works Nitin Bathla: Nitin Bathla’s intervention proposes to introduce an uncanny encounter through subverting the architecture and site of the promotional kiosk that the real estate salesmen employ. They will subvert the roadside site of the generic promotional kiosk, by turning the kiosk into a space facilitating critical inquiries into air pollution and how real estate ties into it. Sharbendu De: For the project, Sharbendu is proposing to create a staged photographic intervention which will be exhibited in public spaces across Delhi. The intervention will engage with the idea of climate-induced future-scapes, creating staged photographs and an immersive experience that speculatively imagines what future lives may look like in the climate crisis, with technological and natural interventions to control spaces and make them liveable.

A projection of the AQI— recorded from inside a house on a residential building in Khirkee, as part of the ‘My house is ill’ project by Depanshu Gola and Abhimanyu Singhal for Does The Blue Sky Lie: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities. Image Courtesy: Architecture for Dialogue.

Depanshu Gola and Abhimanyu Singhal: The artist duo co-run ‘Architecture for Dialogue — @afd.city’, a research and design practice pushing the boundaries of architecture across physical and digital mediums. Along with Salil Parekh, a design researcher, creative technologist and avid gamer-developer artist, the group will adopt a spatial lens to study air pollution. Making use of digital and physical experiments to engage audiences, the project is an attempt to ‘see’ air around us in greater detail, prompt deeper questions and inspire a sense of curiosity amidst the pollution crisis. Bhagwati Prasad: Bhagwati has planned to engage a gathering of 40 young adults, including safai workers, auto drivers, young artists and students, through a series of conversations about what breath and breathing means to them in an environment such as New Delhi, especially since not everybody is exposed to bad air equally. How is air pollution and toxicity perceived in vernacular registers and understood by different people forms the crux of his inquiry, which will end in a mass drawing exercise involving some of the people he has been speaking to. They will use the word दम, meaning breath, but also having other connotations, as the entry point around which to create a large-scale drawing unpacking responses to this inquiry.

Aditya Garg: Aditya Garg along with Visual Respiration, an immersive theatre company, is building a public performative work that revolves around breath and collecting different breath patterns. The team has 4-5 entry points that serve as building blocks to the performance, one

दम Dumm. Image courtesy: Bhagwati Prasad.

part of which will try delve into the breath’s connection to physical labour & dust, creating a repository of embodied gestures, breaths and coughs that can speak to the embodied experience of breathing in toxic environments. Their performers are improv professionals and will alter these 4-5 larger scripts based on the context of the public sites they are performing in. Hues of Blue: Hues of Blue by Analina Sanyal, in partnership with ThinkArts, is engaged in workshops with school-children across India led by youth collaborators in conversation with scientists and other experts, to ask young people what their sky looks like, and in the process, examine how there can be multiple different skies experiencing the same environmental and ecological crises. These responses are unfolding in the form of an online intervention at the moment, and will culminate in an online workshop with some artefacts and responses from the session exhibited publicly during the festival. Achia Anzi: Achia will explore the relation between capitalism, air pollution, and the gradual privatisation of our commons. He will create a fictive world: Together We Breathe is a fictional NGO – inspired by real organisations – with the mission to solve Delhi’s smog. Established and run by the rather eccentric Dr Ajay Chopra, the “solutions” that the NGO proposes for air pollution accentuate the inability of neoliberalism to cope with its own crisis. The project will include the development of a website/blog and social media account in which Dr Chopra’s neoliberal philosophy will be presented and an environmental

An Elegy for Ecology. Image courtesy: Sharbendu De.

science lab in which Dr Chopra carries out his experiments, culminating in the development of an ‘air purifier’ that will tackle Delhi’s air pollution crisis.

Blue Skies—For Profit Homes. Image courtesy: Nitin Bathla.

My house is ill! Image courtesy: Depanshu Gola and Abhimanyu Singhal, 68 AfD

As part of ‘Does the Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities’, Khoj curated and showcased two projects in collaboration with TBA21 and initiated ‘On Air’, a Speaker Series to hold conversations with academics, journalists and other experts.

Khoj x TBA21 on st_age September 2020–July 2021 Digital Platform “Historic Makran coast is where the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) starts.” Images and notes from field-work by Omer Wasim and Shahana Rajani.

Khoj collaborated with TBA21 to curate two projects that engage with the idea of air and toxicity to be showcased on their digital platform st_age.

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) is a leading international art and advocacy foundation created in 2002 by the philanthropist and collector Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Coy Decoy fromThe Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan. Image courtesy: 70 Abhishek Hazra.

Exploring the ways in which spiritual practices of communities in the area counter and bear witness to violent erasures directed at their ancestral lands and the environment at large. Images and notes from field-work by Omer Wasim and Shahana Rajani.

Safarnama Saraab (Omer Wasim and Shahana Rajani) 18 December 2020 Digital Showcase Creative Practitioners Saraab (Omer Wasim and Shahana Rajani) and Heba Islam ‘Safarnama’, 2020 Invoking the presence of jinns to explore the toxicities of air, Safarnama (2020) activates natural and sacred worlds to pay attention to the intimacy of toxic colonialisms. Borrowing its name from and referencing the history of travel literature produced in the Islamic world, Safarnama traces the journey of a jinn travelling through the emerging, extractive infrastructures of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Saraab is an ongoing collaboration between Karachi-based artists, Shahana Rajani and Omer Wasim. Saraab envisions their practice and its nomadic formations as part of a living organism: part mythical, part real, which can be called upon through invocations, rituals, and critical fabulations. Saraab—meaning mirage or nazar ka dhoka—is a quiet, amorphous entity that can go undetected. Unapologetically sensitive to their surroundings, their movements and formations work slowly and quietly to unsettle existing restrictions and regulations.

The Myth of Infrastructural Utopia: Development, Displacement and Desolation To contextualise the works, Khoj also produced The Myth of Infrastructural Utopia: Development, Displacement and Desolation, a podcast hosted by anthropologist, Heba Islam. The podcast took the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as an entry point to talk about the messy contradictions and tensions between ecological considerations, economic aspirations, and the realities on the ground for marginalised Pakistani communities who find themselves in the way of ‘development.’

The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan Abhishek Hazra 19 July 2021 Digital Showcase Creative Practitioners Abhishek Hazra and Aruna Chandrasekhar ‘The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan’ The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan is a six-part sequential exploration with sound, voice, and moving images. Conceptualised in the wake of auto-generated toxicities that swarm in the air, the artwork attempts to spend some time with the question of being in common with ‘our’ atmosphere. It is also an exploration in not forgetting that there exist radically different ways of breathing not all of which are bound to oxygen. The work tries to speculate what kinds of worlds would emerge when air itself becomes unstable. In the process of this speculation, this artwork also takes a detour through the policed enclosures of colonial forests in South Asia and those incendiary events that appeared to interrupt the disciplinary regime of accumulation. Abhishek Hazra’s practice unfolds through a mesh of diverse yet closely interconnected interests. Social histories of science and an ironic fascination with the lived lives of strangely persistent theoretical frameworks are some of his ongoing preoccupations. His recent lecture-performances explore speculative histories of knowledge formations through the figure of the amateur enthusiast.

Articulate Matter To explore Abhishek Hazra’s work, climate journalist, Aruna Chandrasekhar hosted Articulate Matter, a podcast where she discussed how narratives and scientific data around changing ecosystems remain suppressed and ignored by mainstream media, especially for those belonging to marginalised and Adivasi communities, acting as a manifestation of environmental racism.

Image courtesy: Omer Wasim and Shahana Rajani.

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Prime Toxic from The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan. Image courtesy: 74 Abhishek Hazra.

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Image courtesy: Omer Wasim and Shahana Rajani.

Shared Targets from The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan. Image courtesy: Abhishek Hazra.

Prescription from The Aerosol Chronicles Capture Omlojan. Image courtesy: Abhishek Hazra

On Air: With Dr. Awadhendra Sharan & Dr. Rohit Negi 30 October 2020 Webinar

Dr. Awadhendra Sharan is acting director at CSDS and works at the intersection of urban and environmental studies. Dr. Rohit Negi is an associate professor of urban studies at the School of Global Affairs, Ambedkar University 76 Delhi

From early Orientalist conceptions that saw dust as a marker of the backwardness of colonies to drawings by British architect Gordon Sanderson that imagined the Qutub Minar as smoke-stacks in the early 1900s, the colonial imaginary has played a large role in fashioning India’s atmospheric modernities. To further our inquiry of these concepts and explore the troubled ecologies of the air in Delhi, Khoj initiated ‘On Air’, a Speaker Series, as part of Does the Blue Sky Lie? Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities. In Khoj’s first ‘On Air’ conversation, Dr. Awadhendra Sharan and Dr. Rohit Negi discussed the industrial and colonial histories that have shaped the air we breathe..

On Air: With Disha Shetty 30 November 2021 Webinar

For the second edition of ‘On Air’, Disha Shetty, an independent science journalist, explored the public health impacts of air pollution, the climate and health benefits of clean air and the limited conversation on the disproportionate impact of air pollution on vulnerable sections like the poor and women. ‘Does The Blue Sky Lie?: Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities’ is supported by the Prince Claus Fund.

Disha Shetty is an independent science journalist based in Pune, who writes about public health, environment, and gender.

Free/Dem Media Training Program 27 August–27 December 2021

Detail from the media training program.

A key focus for Khoj has been to continue its sustained and consistent engagement with the Khirkee community through its programs. Khirkee’s central location has always attracted a variety of residents—migrant workers, refugees, students and artists. More recently, political instability in Afghanistan has added a large number of Afghans to Khirkee’s ever changing and shifting population. Khoj has always been agile and quick to respond to changing situations and altering its community programs according to the need of the hour. A short window, after the brutal Covid Delta wave, gave Khoj the opportunity to collaborate with Ideosync for their Free/Dem Media Training Program to empower women and young girls from the Afghan community through digital media literacy. The program enabled the participants to reclaim online media spaces by taking cognisance of the digital inequality among different sections of society, especially women and those marginalised by socio-economic disparities. The aim of the program was to create an environment which supports women and girls to resist patriarchal hierarchies that prevent them from online expression and presence. It simultaneously educated them to safely

engage with the digital platform while ensuring their privacy in the digital space. Khoj x Ideosync Digital Media Literacy was a fifteen week certificate course which was held at Khoj. Over 35 Afghan girls participated in the media training sessions at Khoj, which were led by Ideosync program coordinators Hafsa Naaz and Nishi Kumari.

Ideosync program coordinators Hafsa Naaz and Nishi Kumari leading a session.

ARThink South Asia (ATSA) 2020–2021 ATSA Fellows share what the programme has meant to them during the ThATSA10 celebrations online

Initiated in 2010, ARThinkSouthAsia is a management, policy and research programme dedicated to founding and supporting a cadre of arts managers committed to the cause of capacity building in the South Asian region. Through 2020, ATSA organised online sessions for artists and art managers across South Asia to share concerns, offer support, explore possibilities, and reimagine new modes of work. At the beginning of the pandemic, ATSA’s first response was to reach out to Fellows across the region through a series of zoom calls, followed by online sessions in April & May 2020, on topics that emerged from previous conversations. Four sessions on ‘New Models for Financial Support in the Arts, Reimagining Collaborations, Digital Futures, Mental Well-being’ were led by ATSA Fellows from India, Pakistan & Bangladesh while two sessions on ‘Insertion of New Clauses in Artists’ Contracts due to COVID-19 and Understanding Digital Data Privacy & IPR in the Arts Sector’, featured guests and experts. All sessions were open to arts and cultural practitioners from across South Asia. In July 2020, ATSA in collaboration with Fellow, Archana

Prasad of Jaaga launched dara.network, along with the British Council. The alumni management & collaboration tool was built to be used extensively by ATSA Fellows & further strengthen the network. Commissioned by the British Council, ATSA’s research team consisting of Sue Hoyle, Petia Tzanova and, Tanya Dutt published an Evaluation Report on ATSA’s 10 year journey. The report described the impact and legacy of the programme and the transformative impact it has had on individuals, in terms of enhanced management skills, increased confidence, broadened perspectives, and a wider network of contacts beyond national boundaries. In March 2021, ATSA also celebrated its 10th anniversary, with fellows and team members reminiscing their days from the residential programme and sharing their hopes for the future of the arts.

Highlights from the Evaluation Report on ATSA’s 10 year journey published by Sue Hoyle, Petia Tzanova and Tanya 82 Dutt.

The report assesses the impact of the ATSA programme and illustrates through brochures, graphs, archival images, and leaflets within the report how ATSA has contributed to growing professional skills, art networks, and solidarity across South Asia.

Monitor 13 & 14 2020–2021 Film Screenings

For over two decades, Khoj has been committed to building networks across South Asia, and given this engagement Khoj was delighted to present two editions of South Asian Visual Art Centre’s MONITOR series. SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) is a nomadic artist-run organisation dedicated to fostering imaginative thought among artists and curators of colour. MONITOR is SAVAC’s longstanding experimental film and video programme that holds steady engagement with an international community of artists, curators, and critics, initiating dialogues around the shifting nature of politics, economies, and landscapes through artists’ films.

Nazli Dinçel’s Shape of a Surface. Image courtesy: SAVAC.

Parastoo Anoushahpour & Faraz Anoushahpour’s Pictures of Departure. Image courtesy: SAVAC.

Film screening at Khoj with Priya Sen and Oliver Husain.

Inas Halabi’s We Have Always Known the Wind’s Direction. Image courtesy: SAVAC.

Sponge Gourd Collective’s Nothing Ever Happens Here. Image courtesy: SAVAC

Meera Devidayal’s Water Has Memory. Image 86 courtesy: SAVAC

Monitor 13: Dance on My Head and Scratch My Heart

Monitor 14: Drifting with the Summer Tides

16 January 2020 Film Screenings at Khoj Studios

23 July – 6 August 2021 Virtual Film Screenings

Co-curated by Sharlene Bamboat and Priya Sen, the films were assembled through letters, biographies, surfaces, sounds, and architectures and gestured towards things lost and hidden along the way and their connections to living and renewal. Dance On My Head And Scratch My Heart invited the viewer to dance to the meditative, moving images in the programme and consider the indecipherable traces and charges of the past.

Curated by Rasha Salti, Drifting with the Summer Tides drew from allegories of tidal and wave movements to invite the viewer to discover how filmmakers and artists imagine, narrate, represent and re-articulate our being in the world within a living environment with relationships to placemaking, subjectivity, agency, our being as carriers of memory and of a counter-memory of resistance, our being as carriers of ideology and of struggle.

Films Pictures of Departure by Faraz Anoushahpour & Parastoo Anoushahpour Tell me the Story of All These Things by Rehana Zaman Shape of a Surface by Nazli Dinçel House of Women by Michelle Williams Gamaker Celestial Vault by August Fröhls Herat in my Head in my Heart by Weeda Azam were here by Oliver Husain

Films Billowing Tide Water Has Memory by Meera Devidayal Jordão by Gian Spina Dialogue with the Unseen by Valerio Rocco Orlando Wave Crest Untitled Part 9: this time by Jayce Salloum Nothing Ever Happens Here by Sponge Gourd Collective [Daphne Xu, Beatrix Chu, Diane Zhou] A Line Was Drawn by Mairead McClean Stealing Earth by Karan Shrestha Breaker Tide The Hole’s Journey by Ghita Skali Syrialism by Dalia Al-Kury Ebbing Wave Part II: Fatimah and Kulit by Pathompon Mont Tesprateep We Have Always Known the Wind’s Direction by Inas Halabi Shadow & Act byTaiki Sakpisit 87

we are opposite like that 13 March 2021 Book Reading & Soundscape at Khoj Studios Book Reading performance by Himali Singh Soin at Khoj.

Khoj hosted a Book Reading performance by artist Himali Singh Soin of her book, we are opposite like that along with an exhibition of the soundscape, how to startle the unbelieving. we are opposite like that is a series of interdisciplinary works that comprises mythologies from the poles, told from the non-human perspective of an elder that has witnessed deep time: the ice. It beckons the ghosts hidden in landscapes and turns them into echoes, listening in on the resonances of potential futures. The book is an almanac, a messy collection of missing paraphernalia from the polar archives, false philosophies, unreliable observations from the ship, love letters, ekphrastic poems, made-up maps, theories, recipes, and small resistances. how to startle the unbelieving is a poem produced from an erasure of the only archive left about a girl from Calcutta, who the British Empire used as a clairvoyant medium and a porous channel through which to travel to the Arctic in search of Franklin and his two lost ships, Erebus and Terror. The wreck of Erebus and Terror were discovered in mid-September 2014 and 2016.

Himali Singh Soin is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences, entanglements, deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance, and intimacy. In doing this, she thinks through ecological loss, and the loss of home, seeking shelter somewhere in the radicality of love. Her speculations are performed in audiovisual, immersive environments.

Peers 2021 Residency 2–31 August 2021, Virtual Residency HTML-based interactive exercise book Learning a Language by Pahul Singh.

Jury Savita Apte, Marialaura 90 Ghidini, Monica Narula

25 September–3 October 2021, Open Day at Khoj Studios The Peers programme at Khoj has grown as a unique residency model that incubates young graduates and practitioners at an early stage of their careers. Over the past few years, the residency has also grown in terms of scope and outreach, with a wider and more diverse applicant pool. After a pandemic-induced hiatus, Peers 2021 marked the 17th edition of Peers. It was the first-ever hybrid Peers residency with a one-month-long residency unfolding online from 2nd August to 31st August 2021, followed by a two-week physical immersion by the residents at Khoj Studios 15th September onwards, and a Peers 2021 exhibition at Khoj from 25th September to 3rd October, shortly after. In addition to the onsite exhibition, for the first time ever, Khoj also created an online viewing room for the works produced during Peers 2021. In spite of this shift to a hybrid model, the core aim to provide young artists a forum for experimentation and interaction with the larger creative community remained intact.

Scan here to access the Peers 2021 online showcase.

Over the years the residency model has been constantly refined and updated to be more relevant to the times. The programme is populated with artists’ visits and interactions, studio visits, and curated exhibition walkthroughs, for the residents to have a gamut of art-related experiences and exposure. In 2021, Khoj faced the additional challenge of moving these activities into an online platform. In order to simulate a physical environment, Khoj used Topia, a virtual world-building social engagement platform. The platform had embedded resources such as Khoj publications and links to previous programs to help simulate the experience of being in the Khoj building. We saw the hybrid model as a unique opportunity to expose young artists to working and thinking through online modes of working, as well as digital formats of display. As part of the programme, Khoj organised informative Zoom sessions with Asia Art Archive and Marialaura Ghidini along with an online Studio visit with Shaina Anand. Khoj also programmed a writing session with Asia Art Archive exclusively for the critic in residence. Subsequently after Delhi opened post the second wave of the Covid 19 pandemic, Khoj sensed it as an

SUDDENLY AND SLOWLY I EXISTED FOREVER from Shubham Kumar’s IT IS IN THE MOMENT, EVERYTIME ATLEAST YOU LOSE ONE…

opportune moment to open the digital residency into a physical one. A two-week residency at Khoj studios, from 15th September to 3rd October, was programmed where the Peers 2021 artists came down to Khoj to work towards a physical exhibition. Artists-in-Residence Pahul Singh, Jayeeta Chatterjee, Salman Bashir, Sandeep TK, Shubham Kumar, Srinivas Harivanam. Critic-in-Residence Shivani Kasumra.

Srinivas Harivanam’s Spinal Clicks of Resistance.

Details from the Peers virtual residency space 92 on Topia

Peers is supported by The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation.

Woodcut prints and Nakshi Kantha on recycled sari from Jayeeta Chatterjee’s Cycle of Life

Detail from How long does it take for an eye to dissolve in a forgotten river? by Salman Bashir.

Peers Share

8–10 September 2021 Online Discussion

Each year, the Peers residency programme receives many applications and Khoj is only able to accommodate a few selected applicants for the residency. In a bid to extend the conversation, Khoj instituted Peers Share that traditionally follows the Peers Open Day. Envisioned to be a seminar-like program and for the artists who qualify for the final round of the residency, the session serves as a great learning opportunity. The artists showcase their practice and get beneficial feedback from their peers, senior art practitioners, critics, and the Khoj Curatorial team. This year Khoj held the programme online on Zoom. Peers Share 2021 dialogued with 15 applicants over a three-day forum with the intent to support and strengthen ideas/art practices. On each day, each session consisted of five Peers Share participants as well as two senior artists and curators who responded to their work. The participants of Peers Share this year had varied practices ranging from sculpture to filmmaking and animation, from oil paintings to digital collage making and hypertext. It brought together a diverse set of young artists from varied backgrounds

responding to the socio-political moment of today, using this forum to raise critical and urgent questions about their practice, their struggles and the responsibility of representing what they felt. Peers Share 2021 has been supported by Tarana Sawhney. Selected Artists Anant Jain, Bheeshma Kumar Sharma, Harmeet Rattan, Isha Itwala, Madhurjya Dey, Maksud Ali Mondal, Mucharla Madhukar, Neelesh Yogi, Nishi Chauhan, Poojan Gupta, Prashant Patil, Ruma Choudhury, Satyaranjan Das, Suresh Kumar Singha, Tabeena Wani. Panelists Asim Waqif, Gigi Scaria, Gitanjali Dang, Latika Gupta, Radha Mahendru, and Rohini Devasher.

Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) 2021 A session on Images and Ideas by Fred Ritchin, Dean Emeritus of the International Center of Photography, New York.

18 October 2021 – 21 January 2022 Online Intensive

Tutors Shuddhabrata 96 Sengupta, Latika Gupta

For over five years, Khoj in partnership with Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi has been committed to developing and supporting a network of emerging curators across South Asia. As a tightly structured educational programme for young curators, CISA has provided both a structured and an experimental inquiry into the preconditions and possibilities of curatorial practice in the region. The fourth edition of Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) 2021 was led by art practitioner and writer Shuddhabrata Sengupta along with Delhi-based curator Latika Gupta. The curatorial fellowship is structured in two phases. The first phase, the CISA Residential Intensive, is a twoweek programme that invites tutors and lecturers with various specialisations and engagements in artistic, curatorial, writing, and research practices.

Fellows Aakriti Chandervanshi (India), Abeer Gupta (India), Akramul Momen (Bangladesh), Dhrupad Mehta (India), Ishita Shah (India), Kanika Makhija (India), Madhushree Kamak (India), Moakshaa Vohra (India), Oorja Garg (India), Sayali Mundye (India), Sayonee Goswami (India), Shirin Fathi (Iran), Shivangi Bansal (Nepal), Tenzing Sedonla Ukyab Lama (Nepal)

Phase I of CISA was held online from October 18th – 30th, 2021 and had 19 speakers from across the world. The online sessions were a combination of talks, seminars and writing workshops that explored and delved into various themes, curatorial frameworks, histories of exhibition-making, biennales among other things. For the year 2021 the speakers were—Fred Ritchin, Rupali Gupte & Prasad Shetty, Nato Thompson, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Dr. Leonhard Emmerling, Reem Fadda, Diwas Raja KC, Kajri Jain, Michelle Wong, Avni Sethi, Naman P. Ahuja, Dr. Jyotindra Jain, Jahnavi Phalkey, Ravi Agarwal, Urvashi Butalia, Santhosh S., Pooja Sood, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Latika Gupta. In the second phase of CISA, each fellow has the opportunity to independently develop curatorial projects during which they will be mentored by the programme leaders, culminating in exhibitions. For CISA 2021 its Phase II was planned for early January 2022, but unfortunately, due to the Covid pandemic surge we have had to postpone Phase II for later in 2022. Curatorial Intensive South Asia is organised in partnership with Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

un{stacked}: articulations of the algorithmic condition Nayantara Ranganathan and Manuel Beltrán’s A Day in Ads: Delhi at Persuasion Lab.

Creative Practitioners Padmini Ray Murray, Manuel Beltrán and Nayantara Ranganathan with Persuasion Lab, Nandita Kumar, Dhruv Saxena and Praveen Sinha as a4.achaar, Swagata Bhattacharyya Jury Members Nishant Shah, The Khoj 98 Team

2021, Hybrid Residency 8–16 December 2021, Residency, Open Studio and Exhibition at Khoj Studios Khoj presented un{stacked}—articulations of the algorithmic condition, a week-long exhibition and open studio at Khoj as a culmination of a hybrid residency. The catastrophe of the second wave of Covid had overtaken our capacities to be functional individuals and institutions at many levels; we found our increasingly hyperdigital lives and bodies in unique crossroads with technology. As screens began to mediate our interactions with the rest of the world, we picked up on a thread that had been initiated with the Aesthetic Warfare Symposium that was held in collaboration with Digital Earth in 2019. There onwards we wished to further our inquiry into the digital realm, visualise hyper-digital realities, and think together about possible digital futures. With an Open Call to invite artists to think through our possible

“Digital Futures”, Khoj invited proposals from art and design practitioners across India. As part of the selection process Khoj organised a jury with mentor Nishant Shah, who has been the Digital Strategies Advisor for Khoj since 2010, and had played a central role in the Aesthetic Warfare symposium at Khoj. This led to un{stacked}, which started off as a hybrid residency where Khoj supported five artistic practices online, following up with a residency at Khoj Studios for two weeks in November-December. The short residency focused on the production and showcasing process of the artist’s ongoing practices which culminated in an Open Studio from 8-12 December—four days of exhibition, laboratory, gaming, workshops, performance, and conversations Each practice prototyped possibilities of reconfiguring centralised networked systems that are often hidden in plain sight. Each act of unveiling manifested as reimaginations of technological architectures, their histories and futures, and thus, social paradigms. Post Open Studio, the exhibition remained open for public viewing till the 16th of December.

Detail from A Fever Dream of a Feminist Internet by Padmini Ray Murray.

About the five artistic practices by seven artists incubated at un{stacked} 1. Padmini Ray Murray A Fever Dream of a Feminist Internet This is a dream of an internet that privileges individual and community ownership and control, reconfigured through an ethics of care. We are strangled by the tentacles of centralised internet infrastructures, both corporate and governmental, almost carceral in their increasingly suffocating demands on our data and diktats designed to manipulate our behaviour in online spaces. To illustrate these ideas and make them more accessible and relatable, the practice uses metaphors and draws on alternative knowledge systems, such as indigenous and local practices. In conversation with the community, the work imagines an alternative, more just, and meaningful digital ecosystem for all. The exhibition space also hosted Who Data Thinks We Are, a Data Workshop led by the artist that examined our relationships with various platforms and how we share data with and on those platforms. It worked together to imagine how these algorithms and platforms might decipher these “data doubles” created by what we share. Through these activities, the workshop worked towards understanding how our very human assumptions are baked into the making of machine processes. This project is supported by The Ford Foundation. 100

Nandita Kumar’s Osmoscape.

2. Manuel Beltrán and Nayantara Ranganathan A Day in Ads: Delhi by Persuasion Lab Persuasion Lab presents a study of ‘political ads’, exploring the making of political subjects at the hands of the algorithm. In A Day in Ads: Delhi, through data-driven targeting and algorithmic bidding, Facebook chooses one ad among millions for each person’s eyes. Digital advertising business models not only limit our sense-making to the most ‘optimal’ political ad at each moment and for each person, they also exclude encounters with ads deemed unsuitable for our eyes. In this study, the lab offers a rare glimpse into what a shared consideration of realities might throw up. We visualise together, all the different political ads shown on one day to people in Delhi, along with their targeting data. Persuasion Lab explores methodological, aesthetic and discursive responses to understand the informational turn in propaganda and influence. 3. Nandita Kumar Osmoscape Echoes of the Osmotic Landscape Osmoscape explores a graphical notation score, where data and graphs related to water have been arranged to form a sound score. The found data is converted into an image using processing code that becomes the visual bases of a score, leading eventually to sound compositions being constructed out of user engagement via a 101

a4.achaar duo Dhurv Saxena and Praveen Sinha’s Pixelated Elephants.

WebApp, exploring a new way of archiving 55 datasets with their stories and sounds. 4. a4.achaar (duo Dhruv Saxena and Praveen Sinha) Pixelated Elephants Pixelated Elephants is a collection of periscopic views of the possible world and imagined artefacts negotiating the identities associated with journalism. As in the parable of the blind men and the elephant, a4.achaar mapped the pieces of this metaphorical elephant through participative discourses over the last few months. Speculating with the collected signals from those dialogues, they present the narratives from an alternative future world of journalism, content creation, consumption and dissipation, through material artefacts, augmented reality and video evidence. 5. Swagata Bhattacharyya In the Times of Madafangwara In the Times of Madafangwara is an investigative process of a computerised world(nation)building that inquires into the meaning of power and propaganda in a post-social condition controlled by an authoritarian regime. Designed as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) it excavates into methods of misinformation, “fake news,” hate speech, rumours, conspiracy theories etc. that shape our historic present, political past and imagined future. Further, it would explore how architecture, urban planning, built spaces play a role in the militarization of civil society and 102

Swagata Bhattacharyya’s In the Times of Madafangwara.

cultivate questions regarding the awareness towards the role of the tech giants as amplifiers and collaborators of the state ideology to the populace

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Khoj Website Launch 16 December 2021

Unveiling of a new visual identity.

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As Khoj enters its 25th year in 2022, we look back at the history of how Khoj began with the purpose of enabling young practitioners to create art in an open-ended and experimental manner. And as we look to the future while Khoj embeds itself into an ever-shifting hybrid landscape, our role remains to provide both a digital and physical space to artists, independent of formal and commercial institutions. At the turn of the pandemic, Khoj felt the innate need to extend its role from physical to a virtual space and restructure its digital presence to provide greater accessibility to its audience and artists alike. Thus culminating in a new website and visual identity. The website launch was held on the 16th of December at the premises, and musician Flexi K curated a set for the evening. Designers Ananya Khaitan (graphic designer and founder of Novel) and Hamsa Ganesh (web designer and founder of Thoughtput) came on board to create Khoj’s new website that is built to serve as an institutional archive, and was the culmination of 18 months of work and over 46 hours of conversations.

The site reflects Khoj’s emphasis on community engagement and socially-engaged art practice. Khoj’s present programming can now be seen in the context of its past, tracing curatorial threads through the years. Crucially, Khoj’s interest in art’s intersections with other disciplines or thematics has also been highlighted. The new Khoj website has transitioned to be the digital platform that captures the shift in society and is better suited for a contemporary art organisation of and for the future. Khoj’s new website is supported by the Goethe-Institut’s International Relief Fund 2020, The Ford Foundation and The Prince Claus Fund.

Scan here to visit Khoj’s new website.

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The Khoj eye overlooking the courtyard

Designers Ananya Khaitan and Hamsa Ganesh address the crowd.

Going through the years with Khoj projection in the 106 programs room.

Pooja Sood, Hamsa Ganesh, and Ananya Khaitan in conversation.

Art & its intersections with ever-evolving thematics

Team Khoj with designers Ananya and Hamsa

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H AT

E DO S

Khoj now looks towards its next chapter. And, as always, we ask ourselves:

T DO

CAN

A T H

T BE

We extend a big thank you to our Artists, Board Members, Advisory Board, Benefactor, and Capital Circle members for their ongoing support.

Khoj Team

Khoj Board

Director Pooja Sood

Amar Kanwar Anita Dube Manisha Parekh Parmesh Shahani Pooja Sood Rohini Devasher Urvashi Butalia

Programme Team Indranjan Banerjee Manjiri Dube Niyati Dave Ruchira Das—Deputy Director for ARThinkSouthAsia Media & Production Alina Tiphagne Suresh Pandey Admin & Accounts V.P. Manoj Laxmi Devi Khoj Canteen Rajesh Gupta Karma Support Staff Arun Chhetri Govind Fellows Gauri Pathak Isha Bhattacharya 110

Khoj Advisory Board Amrita Jhaveri Hoor Al-Qasimi Shalini Passi Sunita Choraria Poonam Bhagat Shroff

Capital Circle Project Room supported by Amrita Jhaveri Courtyard supported by Shalini Passi Artist Residence supported by The Malhotra Weikfield Foundation (in memory of Kanwal Mohini Malhotra) Reading Room supported Nirlon Foundation Trust (in memory of late Mr. Manhar Bhagat) Media Lab supported by Sunita Choraria Terrace supported by Czaee Shah Studio #1 supported by The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Studio #2 supported by Vivan Sundaram & Geeta Kapur Studio #3 supported by S.H. Raza Studio #4 supported by Apeejay Trust in memory of Surrendra Paul Studio #5 supported by Nature Morte Khoj Canteen supported in memory of Mrs. Lata Sud

Special Thanks To Robert Loder Bhavna Kakar Max & Monique Burger Jayashree Mohta. Khoj building redesigned by Studio Lotus in 2012

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S-17, opposite Select Citywalk, near Sai Baba Mandir, Khirki Extension, Malviya Nagar, New Delhi, Delhi 110017, India +91 72898 81668 112