curated by BHARATI KAPADIA, CHANDITA MUKHERJEE & ANUJ DAGA
Cover image: INTERFERENCE | Tallur L N
FIELDS OF VISION an online festival of Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists
presented by Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in association with Comet Media Foundation with the support of Bajaj Group Trusts and Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
VAICA 2 curators Bharati Kapadia, Chandita Mukherjee and Anuj Daga thank all those whose support has made the festival possible. Firstly, the seventy nine participating artists, who responded to our call wholeheartedly with contributions of their work. There is more about them and their work later in this catalogue.
We note the contributions of our festival team: Krittika Bhattacharjee for the design of the festival communications. These took off from the festival’s visual identity developed by Ayesha Aggarwal for VAICA 1. Krishna Mehta for managing the VAICA 2 social media campaign.
We are grateful to Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, the Honorary Director of the Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, for her support and initiative in finding the funds to support VAICA 2.
Aakash Kulkarni for his advice on sound.
Our special thanks to Meenal and Niraj Bajaj of the Bajaj Group of Trusts for coming forward with financial aid to the festival.
Nishtha Sadwelkar for her support on putting the videos online and monitoring the response.
We acknowledge the support of Shyam Maniyar of Bajaj Trusts and the team from the Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum: Gargi Mashruwala, Ruta Waghmare and Vijay Nakti.
Dipti Bhaindarkar for assisting us with technical interface setups.
Our gratitude to the trustees of the Comet Media Foundation for supporting the festival from its inception.
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Shyam Shimpi for the editing of the weekly panel discussions.
Neil Sadwelkar for his systematic advice on numerous technology and aesthetic issues that arose on the way to holding an online edition of the festival. Ashwin Lokare and Umesh Ipte of Comet Media Foundation for administrative support to the festival.
VAICA is a public platform that looks closely at artful and critical engagements in video and moving images by Indian contemporary artists. It brings together video practitioners of Indian origin from various backgrounds who have found themselves experimenting with the medium. This edition of the VAICA festival, FIELDS OF VISION, brings together 79 artists with 121 video works.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS 2021 • AAKASH DUBEY • ABEER KHAN • ABHISHEK HAZRA
THE GHOST TAXONOMY | Tushar Waghela
• ADITI KULKARNI • AMITESH GROVER • AMOL PATIL • AMSHU CHUKKI • ANJANA KOTHAMACHU • ANKIT RAVANI • ANKUR YADAV • ANURADHA RUDRAPRIYA • ARCHANA HANDE • ASHOK MEENA • AYAN BISWAS • AYISHA ABRAHAM • BABU ESHWAR PRASAD • BAIJU PARTHAN • BHARATI KAPADIA • BISWAJIT DAS • C CHAITHANYA • CHINMOYI PATEL • DEVADEEP GUPTA • DHARMENDRA PRASAD • GAURA SINGH • GAYATRI KODIKAL • GIGI SCARIA • HANSA THAPLIYAL • HETAL CHUDASAMA • JAHANGIR JANI • JAIDEEP MEHROTRA • JYOTEE • KARTHIK K G • KARTIK MISHRA • KATYAYINI GARGI • KHANDAKAR OHIDA • KHUSHBU PATEL • KUNATHARAJU MRUDULA • KUSH BADHWAR • MANJOT KAUR • MANMEET DEVGUN • MAYA KRISHNA RAO • MONALI MEHER • MOONIS AHMAD • MURARI JHA • NEHA CHOKSI • PARASHAR NAIK • PARUL GUPTA • PAYAL ARYA • POOJA IRANNA • PRABHAKAR PACHPUTE • PRANAY DUTTA • PRANEET SOI • PRANTIK BASU • PRATUL DASH • RANBIR KALEKA • RANJINI KRISHNAN • ROHAN CHAVAN • SABA HASAN • SABYASACHI BHATTACHARJEE • SAJID WAJID SHAIKH • SANDEEP T K • SANSKRITI CHATTOPADHYAY • SHEBA CHHACHHI • SHREYA MENON • SOGHRA KHURASANI • SOHRAB HURA • SUKANYA GHOSH • SUMAKSHI SINGH • SUNIL PADWAL • SURABHI SHARMA • SUREKHA • SURESH B V • SWAGATA BHATTACHARYYA • TALLUR L N • TUSHAR WAGHELA • USHNISH MUKHOPADHYAY • VEER MUNSHI • VIBHA GALHOTRA • VISHAL KUMARASWAMY • 2
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The Second Innings of VAICA CHANDITA MUKHERJEE On the eve of VAICA 2, I’ll try to give a quick take on what brought us here, by tracing the process that led to this online festival of almost 12 hours of video works by 79 artists spread over a month. After the exhilaratin run of VAICA 1 in Mumbai, Delhi, Goa, Ahmedabad and Baroda at the turn of 2019-2020, we were all set for more shows in various cities, all of which involved the critical element of support from a cultural organisation in that particular location for the hall and projection and a bit of funding to enable at least one of us to travel there. Sadly, it all got abruptly terminated in March 2020 with the pandemic. In the months of limbo that followed, we kept looking for a chance to get started again, tentatively inserting fingers and toes into various nooks to get a move up. The first outlines defining the 2021 show started emerging like a photo print in a darkroom tray. Given the pandemic, it had to be an online fest, we needed to reconnect with the VAICA 1 artists, to find out what people of interest were doing and to discover new connections. Learning about the requirements of staging an online event was another challenge and we had to raise the necessary funds.
MEMORY IS ALWAYS IN THE PERIPHERY | Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya
We got in touch with a wide range of makers and initiated the selection process. Many people had been unable to do much during the lockdown as activities 4
involving teams or travelling to locations were ruled out. Still, we started getting entries and were quite excited to see what creative people, alone at home were doing. The financial side was difficult, for resources were short all around due to the pandemic. At last we had a breakthrough, with Tasneem Zakaria Mehta of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum stepping in, and she recommended us to the Bajaj Trusts. The Trusts and the Museum have been ideal patrons, supportive and noninterfering, after the initial process of enquiries and due diligence. In the meantime, we were seeing and choosing the works for VAICA 2. Starting in November '20, we saw around 200 video works. All three curators consulted on their viewings each week and we boiled the selection down to the 121 you will see in this years’ fest. The screening criteria developed organically as we moved along. One parameter was durations, 15 minutes or less, which circumscribed our choices, but we made exceptions in a couple of cases. We knew that short features, narrative in nature, did not belong here, nor did straightforward documentary films, nor works of a polemical nature. But nothing is airtight, there are works that do cross these lines because we liked what the makers were doing. It wasn’t that we three curators agreed on everything, but overall, the conviction reflected in the work and our emotional response to it, counted over other criteria. The participants in VAICA 1 were visual artists. This time we invited video practitioners from across disciplines. We took a conscious decision not to have an open call. ‘Democratic’ as an open call sounds, we did not have the bandwidth to 5
process hundreds of entries. We directly sought out and invited makers to send works or followed recommendations. In the process, we discovered people in areas such as film making, theatre, dance, teaching and research, even ayurvedic medicine, giving us a sense of the ubiquity of video as a mode of self-expression. As we watched, we also sorted them into some tentative categories. As we approached the launch, the whole pattern fell into place thanks to the strenuous meditations of our co-curator Anuj Daga. Fields of Vision became the overarching theme of the festival and the four weekly interpolated fields: art-science, bodydesire, real-imagined and hetero-urban, emerged. As may be expected many works refer to the pandemic and the impact of the lockdown on human lives. Maya Krishna Rao’s IT'S EASIER NOW, Veer Munshi’s LOCKDOWN I & LOCKDOWN II, Hetal Chudasama’s DEEPEST DEMARCATION, Aditi Kulkarni and Payal Arya’s MEMORY IS ALWAYS IN THE PERIPHERY, and Saba Hasan’s DEATH WILL COME LIKE A SHADOW all refer in direct and oblique ways to the disorientation and anxieties caused by the pandemic. In the absence of opportunities to work outdoors, artists turned to their archives and fashioned new work from old material, with the perspective of time. Examples include Anuradha Rudrapriya’s PAUSE IN THE SUBLIME and Babu Eashwar Prasad’s ON THE ROAD. Works on the impact of the advances in information technologies on human lives and the entanglement of the organic and synthetic worlds, take
us to the dark regions of the digital world. These include Sanskriti Chattopadhyay’s BECOMING INVISIBLE and Vishal Kumaraswamy’s SWAAYATTATE (AUTONOMY). We are shown dystopian views of a future that may not be so far away in Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee’s elaborately visualised FAR FROM HOME, HOMECOMING and SURVIVAL ENGINE. Systemic inequities come to centre stage with Swagata Bhattacharyya’s ROAD SCENE, Tushar Waghela’s THE GHOST TAXONOMY and Suresh B V’s CANES OF WRATH as also Karthik K G’s SEISMIC VIBRATO. Women’s issues are highlighted in Ranjini Krishnan’s DAUGHTERS OF SCHEHERAZADE, Khandakar Ohida's I WAS STILL SILENT and THE LAST DREAM I SAW and Kunatharaju Mrudula’s STAIN and other works. Concern for the environment and climate change are expressed in many of the videos, as is the subject of mental illness and emotional well-being.
In VAICA 2, we made efforts to locate artists from all parts of India and the diaspora. In future, we should open it out to the SAARC countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and to broaden our search to include Burma to the east and westwards, Iran as well.
At last we are rolling! Our insecurities about the accessibility and viewing ease of the festival are sorted out with the effective linking of the programme charts on our website to the video playback mechanism. What we will miss this year is viewing in a group, the joy of being in a darkened auditorium with a whole lot of people, all communing with the screen, and in the post-screening discussion, with each other. Nothing virtual can replace that feeling of exchange and the insights that emerge from such gatherings. We have a provision for group discussions featuring artists and curators every Saturday and they promise to be good, but will the audience participate vigourously through the chat box provided?
Video art is not a form defined by a technology, but a shorthand term for artistic expression with moving image collages or montages as its medium. To build public awareness about it as an art form, and to create appreciation and an audience, it will take a commitment from various contemporary art-related forums to display video art and to initiate discussions about it. Besides of course, patronage from those in a position to support its production and distribution.
This seems to suggest that it’s time to look to VAICA 3. What will it be about? Who will be the creative people who recognise VAICA as an opportunity and send in works? One person said he wants to make videos talking about things that don’t seem to exist (for everyone). That is, phantasmagoria, combinations of fantastic or imagined imagery.1 Sounds like an intriguing idea and title, but what will be the substance inside? It may be very exciting, showing us hidden aspects of our human selves and society through phantoms. Let us see what comes in!
VAICA is one such attempt to build awareness about video art, We look forward to many more such efforts in coming years and are happy to extend a hand to any organisation that seeks to put on video art shows, wherever they are in the world, A term coined by French dramatist Louis-Sébastien Mercier in 1801 to mean "crowd of phantoms”, from the Greek phantasma for apparition and agora for crowd. 1
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In a moving world BHARATI KAPADIA & ANUJ DAGA
The pandemic year forced most of us into increased screen-times, where indulgence in videos remained the primary way of escaping the imposed interiority of the home. Yet, we argue for the existence of this in-between form that does not quite fit in , that allows it to embrace screen expressions that do not fit into other existing spaces Speaking to a friend over a Zoom call, watching a tele-series over Netflix, browsing through a short clip over YouTube, or checking up a quick gif message over WhatsApp – all define forms of screen material that may be called “video” – through which we come to refill the world lost at present, while being in the safe confines of our home. The term “video” is now charged primarily with the way it is received, rather than produced. Screen devices once the primary instruments to broadcast video, are also the tools through which videos are produced today. Electronic and digital equipment has enabled camera-less videos, making it more accessible, resulting into a plurality of expressive moving image forms. In curating the video works for VAICA 2, we came across a range of experiments that could not be classified within the existing formats of motion-picture exhibition. Video works demand a space of their own for they cannot be easily categorised within the existing genres of short films, commercial advertisements, promotional shorts, hand held reels, or playful voiceover tik-toks. Such forms of video production get quickly subsumed into the logic of the market or thrive on popular modes of expression. In addition, most of them have their own platforms, established social or commercial currency and channels of recognition and legitimisation. HOMECOMING | Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee
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Video art on the other hand consists of works of art in the realm of the screen made in unique dialogue with its apparatus. These works do not necessarily respect the time-rhythms of the commercial formats. They are driven by their subjects and necessity of the creators’ expression. The logics of the marketplace do not bother them. In many instances, we encounter such videos in art galleries that annotate and accentuate a broader set works within conventional exhibitions. Galleries are traditionally designed to accommodate artworks like paintings or sculptures. However, many artists have also taken to producing video works exclusively, which demands a comprehensive discourse of their own. What would be the architecture of a gallery for video works be like? VAICA offers an intermediate space in order to interrogate, articulate and incubate such thoughts in the emerging landscape of new media art production in South Asia. The curatorial process for the second edition of VAICA gave us a chance to articulate nine provisional entry points through which video art may be appreciated and understood. These points have been crystallised from our close engagement with the material we received and sieved through collectively to put up the present festival. These thoughts are inscribed within the practice of video art in India, and thereby the list is an expanding, rather than a comprehensive one. They may seem to get conflated with theories of cinema, screen or moving images. Yet, we argue for the existence of this curious form, that allows it to embrace screen expressions that do 9
not fit into other existing spaces. In this background, the works in VAICA recognise and operate actively within the following perceptive registers of moving images: 1. Collision of serendipitous image-worlds Often, we imagine our world through images which share similar visual characteristics; those that are defined by modes of art history, cultural trends, popular media and other such channels. This puts us at the risk of a kind of smugness, preventing us from taking a chance to craft a fresh world for ourselves. However, when images outside the sphere of sameness are brought together, they are likely to trigger latent worlds, potentially undiscovered within us. Video art allows a passage into these new worlds through the meshing of the unexpected. 2. Re-engineering the language of images Video art challenges the basic techniques through which visual representations are shaped and brought together. Through a play in time and space, a painting may begin to move and shift, a body may exist in multiple locations and landscapes may liquefy and merge into one another. Such orchestrations push video art to slide between the existing grammars of image construction. The resultant work of art is not dependent on one single technique, rather is open to engaging with multiple media and methods. We can say that video art works through the disruption of temporal continuity, disorientation of spatial fixity, and disjuncture of conventional techniques of representation.
ISOSCELES FOREST | Sukanya Ghosh
3. Fracturing the conventional narrative structures of story telling Forms of storytelling that extend beyond the narrative structures of beginningmiddle-and-end find space in video art. Forms like video diaries and video sketches are new ways to record time fragments. Such recorded memories are accessed today in jump cuts, often over personal screen devices. Also, real time can be fractured into fragments and transformed to appear in different forms such as GIFs or memes. Video art harnesses these emerging tropes as a formal device, thereby reinventing methods of assembling and organising the ways of storytelling. 4. Altering the proximities of vision Video art works play with juxtapositions of images at different scales of space and time. They may unfold a small detail by zooming into an object or idea, or hold on our attention to a single frame for prolonged periods. In doing so, they can offer sharp commentaries on different subjects in little time. Works of video art shift and complicate our notions of the near and far, and attempt to sustain our gaze, amidst aspects that may be easily overlooked. It highlights the aspect of time that is built into the nature of seeing in a strategic and thoughtful manner, creating fresh ground for altered perspectives. 5. Transgression of disciplinary boundaries Video craft renders traditional tools of a discipline in alternative ways, inevitably leading into new territories of exploration. The screen liberates the artist from material fixity of producing an image, thereby making it easier to work with several 10
media at once. By harnessing a range of techniques and forms, artists are able to push for new modes of expression and arguments that encapsulate issues urgent to their practice, and simultaneously move towards their reconciliation with the contemporary environment. In doing so, they articulate novel methods of hiding or revealing, narrating and communicating, or even diving into the inner life of the video creation. 6. Pushing the limits of one’s artistic medium What happens when one artistic medium is recast within the register of video? The imagination of one’s work and practice through the apparatus of the screen produces an extension of the tools of one medium, giving a new dimension to its own evolution. Limitations of a medium may be compensated by video in order to further an artistic thought. Drawings morph into animations; the spatial qualities of paintings may be explored from new viewpoints; projections of sculptures can warp images and performers may splice acts across time. Staging of mise-enscenes and splicing of unlikely montages are techniques employed by several artists in imagining their work for the screen. In this sense, video acts as a valuable prosthetic for existing mediums of expression. 7. Interaction between the body and the screen Several of the works in VAICA 2 challenge the familiar ways in which our bodies engage with the screen. They compel us to twist and turn our own bodies in order to engage with the subject. Subjecting one’s body to display on the screen may reveal 11
new choreographies of our own selves. Video art thus opens up the space between body and performance. It asks us to wonder if there is only one way of looking at the screen, if there are only limited ways to be inside our bodies, and if there could be space to inhabit in between the body and the screen. 8. Re-orchestration of image, sound and text Etymologically, ‘video’ emerged in 1930s from the Latin videre ‘to see’, on the pattern of audio. Video art interrogates established associations between how image, sound and text are bundled together within audio-visual space. At the same time, it offers sustained engagement with alternative non visual forms which aid visual imagination. Artists may launch images from the space of music, foreground poetry with moving images or collage photographs and texts to produce affective visual narratives. These experiments allow us to consider the internal dependence of various forms of expression and ways in which they communicate certain emotions and ideas to us. 9. Challenging the idea of reality Our physical and intellectual reality is increasingly being shaped by video-matter. Today, we access, record, alter and share our everyday life most readily through the act of video making. While videos made via screen devices multiply the ways in which we construct the real, video art offers an artful dimension by stringing these fragments into new abstractions. In capturing ‘noise’, video camera essentially introduces us to the notion of image resolution – the distance between two pixels,
or units of visual information. 'Seeing' is often used interchangeably with 'knowing' in the contemporary society. Video art makes us aware of the gaps between the two pixels thus creating room for more knowledge. The ideas listed above are not mutually exclusive, rather they dialogue and reinforce each other, in most instances, in order to produce powerful abstractions that help us contemplate upon a range of emotions that we constantly negotiate in space and time. Video art lends the possibility to hold these ephemeral fragments and give them an expression, while VAICA takes these ahead to build emotional communities around them. We live in a moving world that demands a medium of expression complimentary to the transitory nature of our experience. Video art has the potential of holding the poetics and politics of such existence, while we wade through the transforming currents of the contemporary life.
THE GHOST TAXONOMY | Tushar Waghela
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FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING
ONLINE SCREENINGS
VAICA 2 will be presented online over the four weeks from 20 November to 18 December, 2021, free of cost and accessible to everyone across the world. Viewers will have access to four sets of thematically categorised video works that they can watch at their own pace, just by logging onto the VAICA website (www.vaica.org) and registering. Registered viewers will receive the viewing links to the ongoing set of videos of the particular week.
WEEKLY THEMES
Cartographies of Sensation > 20 to 27 Nov 2021 Orbits of Desire > 28 Nov to 4 Dec 2021 Peripheries of the Real > 5 to 11 Dec 2021 Urban Heterotopias > 12 to 18 Dec 2021
CONCLUDING DISCUSSIONS
The festival opens with an online orientation session at 7pm on 20 Nov. Each week concludes with a public discussion featuring one or more of the artists, a cultural critic or commentator, conducted along with the co-curators, also at 7pm. The links for these online discussions will come to registered festival participants.
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SCHEDULE OF PANEL DISCUSSIONS All discussions take place online at 7:00 pm
20 Nov 2021 Opening Launch Opening launch and orientation to the festival Fields of Vision with curators Bharati Kapadia, Chandita Mukherjee, Anuj Daga, advisor Tina Nagpaul & Managing Trustee & Honorary Director, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. 27 Nov 2021 Cartographies of Sensation Panel discussion with artists Hansa Thapliyal & Gigi Scaria moderated by writerresearcher Najrin Islam 4 Dec 2021 Orbits of Desire Panel discussion with artists Moonis Ahmad, Sukanya Ghosh & Tallur L N moderated by filmmaker Paromita Vohra 11 Dec 2021 Peripheries of the Real Panel discussion with artists Ranbir Kaleka, Pranay Dutta & Prantik Basu moderated by curator Akansha Rastogi 18 Dec 2021 Urban Heterotopias Concluding panel discussion with artists Amitesh Grover, Babu Eshwar Prasad & Sheba Chhachhi and moderated by philosopher-anthropologist Sarover Zaidi
CURATORIAL FRAME
FIELDS OF VISION Screen spaces define and describe new geographies of inhabitation in our times, especially since the onset of the pandemic. ‘Fields of Vision’ presents an array of visual experiments by contemporary video practitioners of Indian origin that expand our imaginative geography. The works will be displayed in four interpolated fields: art-science, body-desire, real-imagined and hetero-urban. The pluralising of the singular ‘field’ into the multiple ‘fields’ has a number of implications. It proposes widening of perspectives, multiplying vectors of viewing, and discovering new directions for wandering, pause and inhabitation. 121 videos by 79 artists, shown in four chapters over the four weeks of the VAICA festival will chart new coordinates through which the makers rephrase, re-engineer and perhaps puncture our normalised field of vision.
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weekwise synopses
MAPPING THE MEMORY MANDALA | Sumakshi Singh
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Cartographies of Sensation Week 1 • 20 to 27 Nov, 2021
The first set of videos under Fields of Vision attempts to locate the cartographies of sensation – those that attempt to map the coordinates of experience, observation, perception and artistic production. In these mappings, moving images play between the polarities of science and fiction. They become vehicles of thought and speculation interweaving science with artifice – relocating the boundaries of awareness of the self and its surroundings. The moving images slow down time, make us pause, repeat and reconsider, or suspend us in a limbo towards opening new ways to sense the world. Through such awareness, one may begin to demarcate a space for expanded consciousness in mapping the self. 17
VIDEOLIST
The synopses of these videos are in the pages that follow. The screening time of this set of videos is 2 hrs 45 mins 56 secs, so please set that time aside to view the videos during the week of 20 to 27 November, 2021. From 28 November, the platform will switch to the subsequent week’s programme.
Abhishek Hazra TO DISSOLVE INTO ENTROPY 08.47 Amol Patil STUDY ONESELF 05.14 Ankit Ravani UNDERPAINT 07.10 Baiju Parthan MANIFESTO (ENGINEERED FRUIT) 02.44 Bharati Kapadia PLAYING WITH DANGER 02.12 Gigi Scaria PRISMS OF PERCEPTION 04.20 Hansa Thapliyal SUMMER FLOWERS 03.54 Hansa Thapliyal TRYING TO TALK ‘AGNES’ 05.00 Jyotee MADHO-MADH 04.19 Manjot Kaur CONSTANT MOTION 07.40 Manjot Kaur THE UNTALKABLE VIDEO 05.47 Neha Choksi CHARGE 01.45 Parul Gupta HAIRFALL 05.48 Praneet Soi NOTES ON LABOUR: HOW I MADE CERTAIN OF MY IMAGES 11.34 Ranjini Krishnan DAUGHTERS OF SCHEHERAZADE 18.18 Saba Hasan WATER SUITES 05.00 Sajid Wajid Shaikh LIMBO 03.19 Sajid Wajid Shaikh & Kartik Mishra EAT HIM BY HIS OWN LIGHT 06.19 Sanskriti Chattopadhyay BECOMING INVISIBLE 11.54 Sohrab Hura THE LOST HEAD & THE BIRD 10.12 Sukanya Ghosh ISOLATION OF PECTORALIS MAJOR 02.04 Sumakshi Singh MAPPING THE MEMORY MANDALA 06.52 Sunil Padwal ANACOUSTIC ZONE 01.30 Sunil Padwal DADDY LONGLEGS PLAYING CAT’S CRADLE 01.07 Sunil Padwal THE TURNING EARTH 01.31 Ushnish Mukhopadhyay VIDEO FROM AUTOPSY SERIES 05.19 Vishal Kumaraswamy SWAAYATTATE (AUTONOMY) 16.13 18
Abhishek Hazra TO DISSOLVE INTO ENTROPY (2010) 08.47
STUDY ONESELF | Amol Patil
A bespectacled subject, apparently the artist, repeatedly spits at what appears to be his own image, a large-scale photographic print of his own face. He uses his saliva in an act of auto-erasure, or perhaps an attempt to restore disorder or entropy into the ordered matrix of pixels and ink droplets? A desire to dissolve into the exquisite smoothness of a dead universe? No definitive answers are provided to such questions, the aim seems to be to provoke reactions at the sense level.
Amol Patil STUDY ONESELF (2020) 05.14 An ironic take-off on the do-it-yourself videos that proliferate on social media. Here, the artist is learning to crack open peanuts, from the video that he is producing himself. Amol's intention was to make a performative video about the relationship between the camera and the body, an idea that came from watching people learn skills from online tutorials during the lockdown. TO DISSOLVE INTO ENTROPY | Abhishek Hazra
UNDERPAINT | Ankit Ravani
Ankit Ravani UNDERPAINT (2017) 07.10 Ankit Ravani works with spontaneously formed patterns. In this case, these are made off a dripping paint brush on a window pane. The work was conceived in an attempt to conjure up images of landscapes and river tributaries with transitory patterns and shapes. The artist aims to slow down time with this video and to create an atmosphere for contemplation with the sedimentation of patterns, erasing and revealing what lies underneath. 19
Baiju Parthan MANIFESTO (ENGINEERED FRUIT) (2011) 02.44
Bharati Kapadia PLAYING WITH DANGER (2021) 02.12
Baiju Parthan explores the human enterprise that aims to modify the ecological environment and reality to suit our ideas of convenience and perfection. He examines this ever-expanding sphere of activities ranging from plastic surgery to genetic engineering, bioinformatics and computational biology. The video alerts the viewer to the unanticipated returns of such renderings to our experience of the world.
The phenomenon of danger has many faces, asserts Bharati Kapadia in this brief video. It changes its guise in different circumstances and triggers new emotional responses in us. As we continue to live longer, our experience of danger gathers more meaning. Playing With Danger is a portrait gallery of sorts, displaying portraits of danger, each painted in a new light, from a different perspective
MANIFESTO (ENGINEERED FRUIT) | Baiju Parthan PLAYING WITH DANGER | Bharati Kapadia
PRISMS OF PERCEPTION | Gigi Scaria
Gigi Scaria PRISMS OF PERCEPTION (2010) 04.20 Gigi Scaria asserts that while claiming to live in contemporary times, we actually live deep inside in our own subjective worlds, seeing social ‘change’ only from our limited angles of view. We generalise from what we see, imagining this is obvious to everyone. Scaria puts up a vista across five panels and a train travels through them. Every time the train comes to the boundary of a panel, a new locomotive and wagon model enter the next screen and thus about 150 years of train designs magically cross our view. He says "Time splits, dissects and reconstructs reality to get us confused with the multiple layers of its persona." 20
Hansa Thapliyal TRYING TO TALK ‘AGNES’ (2015) 05.00
SUMMER FLOWERS | Hansa Thapliyal
Hansa Thapliyal SUMMER FLOWERS (2004) 03.54 Hansa Thapliyal made Summer Flowers as part of an exploration to see if films could be made as self supported ventures.This had seemed a challenge till the early 2000s, as the medium was too capital intensive for individuals to make projects on their own resources. With new technologies and the generosity of friends – one loaned a camera, another did the camera work, another did sound, and another played the guitar, she made it. Past memories and the present jostled together, as did still photos and videos too, in this piece about carefree summers, some fresh and some long gone. 21
TRYING TO TALK 'AGNES' | Hansa Thalpiyal
Inspired by Agnes Varda's the ‘Diary of a Pregnant Woman’, Hansa took up Trying to Talk 'Agnes'. It was an attempt at ‘Agnes speak’, to create a free voice with which one could wander about, gather ideas and express them. Hansa set a classroom exercise for her students, to tell about an object dear to them and did this work as her contribution. Her chosen object was her spectacles, her “eyes over my eyes”. Various other lens-like objects eventually find their way into the film.
Jyotee MADHO-MADH (2020) 04.19 Jyotee believes that art is the amalgamation of experiences that an artist undergoes throughout life. In this video, the past (traditions), the present (poet) and the future (technology), coalesce within the frame, expressing a period of transition from the old to the new and raising questions that seem to have no answers. Jyotee’s curiosity about the daring of people who opt for a chip implant in their brains makes her wonder about the desperation for the convenience of having access to infinite amounts of information. “What are the side effects?” she wonders. Maybe complacency and be-numbing of feelings?
MADHO MADH | Jyotee
Manjot Kaur CONSTANT MOTION (2018) 07.40 Manjot Kaur presents an intervention across the microbial, biological, ecological and banal aspects of motion. Time and growth are the central ideas here, expressed in images including flies multiplying, pollination, phases of embryonic germination, Hanuman carrying Dronagiri mountain, clouds passing, scientific diagrams of cellular organelles hovering and more. The artist encourages viewers to construct their own personalised narratives using her symbolism and analogies.
Neha Choksi CHARGE (2017-21) 01.45 In making Charge, Neha Choksi asked friends in Mumbai and Los Angeles to choose a stone that fitted into their palms and to throw it directly at the camera. This multiplied action of successive throws keeps the viewer alert, reminding us that the screen is but a veil, beyond which lives play out in ways more charged than they may appear to us.
CONSTANT MOTION | Manjot Kaur
CHARGE | Neha Choksi
Manjot Kaur THE UNTALKABLE VIDEO (2012) 05.47 Manjot Kaur originated this work with a series of drawings with unclear meanings, as a random physical activity. The creation of these drawings took place in a busy environment, with the purpose of tapping the subconscious. She sees the drawings and animations on them, as a process rather than a product. Sounds, like the refrigerator hum, the buzz of a sewing machine, water falling into a bucket, and so on, pertain to mundane life. No direct representation is intended, only a structural play of elements. The video is “untalkable” about, hence the title. 22
Parul Gupta HAIRFALL (2011) 05.48
Praneet Soi NOTES ON LABOUR: HOW I MADE CERTAIN OF MY IMAGES (2018) 11.34
An experimental work with fine lines, made when Parul Gupta was a student. She used her own hair, collected over a few weeks from pillow, comb and bath, after realising that the strands of hair were simple, organic lines – weightless and occupying a space that lies between 2D and 3D forms. This work became an exploration of drawing with unconventional modes and materials. Each hair strand was dropped from above onto a sheet of white paper, where it occupied space and formed shapes that could not be directed. The mark-making process slowly became dense, akin to drawing with pen or pencil on paper.
From 2011 onwards Praneet Soi made a series of drawings called “the spectre of terrorism” that took off from media images representing events related to 9/11 and subsequent developments. He made standing maquettes of some of the drawings, which he showed the owner of a coir carpet factory near Kochi, when he participated in the Kochi Biennale 201718. This person introduced Praneet to a set of craftspersons who used scissors to cut patterns onto the surface of coir mats, a skill fast becoming outdated. This was perfect for cutting out Praneet’s drawings on the coir surface. The video relates this story in chapters, stitching together the references, in an allusory form of process documentation.
NOTES ON LABOUR: HOW I MADE CERTAIN OF MY IMAGES | Praneet Soi
HAIRFALL | Parul Gupta DAUGHTERS OF SCHEHERAZADE | Ranjini Krishnan
Ranjini Krishnan DAUGHTERS OF SCHEHERAZADE (2020) 18.18 In Daughters of Scheherazade Ranjini Krishnan traces the figure of the virgin and places her in the wedding night, a time of amorous encounters with pleasure and pain in mind and body. It presents the wedding night as a liminal event and projects the liminality of the event onto a psychic landscape. Placed at the edge of time, the nuptial chamber in the film becomes the feminine place of contemplation. The film is a search for the shadowy, nocturnal and the oneiric. This is Ranjini’s debut visual work, produced with support from the India Foundation for the Arts. 23
Saba Hasan WATER SUITES (2021) 05.00
Sajid Wajid Shaikh (2021) LIMBO 03.19
In Water Suites, the artist puts together studies of water filmed in Budapest, Seychelles and Goa, drawing connections between ever-changing aspects of water with the human condition. Characteristic of Saba Hasan's preoccupation with the human connection to nature, we see the varied dynamism of water bodies, and also constancy, as in the steady flow of the Danube at night. The music track for Water Suites is a blend of sounds of waves and a downpour of rain with music composed by her son, pianist Aman Hasan Kumar.
Sajid Wajid Shaikh conducts an experiment in the juxtaposition of two different video works, originally made without any intention of combining one with the other. These are played together in parallel time, to create a third narrative based on the contrast between the two situations. The only intentional binding element is the sound design. Suspension of disbelief needs to be practiced by the viewer.
EAT HIM BY HIS OWN LIGHT | Sajid Wajid Shaikh & Kartik Mishra|
Sajid Wajid Shaikh & Kartik Mishra EAT HIM BY HIS OWN LIGHT (2021) 06.19
WATER SUITES | Saba Hasan
The absurdities of the human mind is what Sajid Wajid Shaikh and Kartik Mishra tap into in this work. The protagonist of the film, an artist, travels through multiple dreamscapes, navigating the many layers of his consciousness. Eventually he gets consumed by a multi-dimensional space goat, his personal demon. The artists describe the work as a salute to Dadaism and early Surrealism. 24
Sanskriti Chattopadhyay BECOMING INVISIBLE (2020) 11.54 2020 marked the 25th year of the internet in India. In this period, digital cuture grew immeasurably. The Internet was no longer perceived as an assistive technology, but a shared culture, understood in varied ways by different segments of society. Sanskriti draws attention to the issue of the virtual footprints that we all leave behind on the internet knowingly or otherwise. These are studied by innumerable machinic-selves like AI. She starts with the intention of becoming invisible to these machinic-selves and makes some discoveries on the way. The video spins out this quest for invisibility in a fascinating intertextual play of visuals and concepts. BECOMING INVISIBLE | Sanskriti Chattopadhyay
THE LOST HEAD & THE BIRD | Sohrab Hura
Sohrab Hura THE LOST HEAD & THE BIRD (2016-19) 10.12 Sohrab Hura takes us to a disorienting and absurd world, where the boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred. Undercurrents of hysteria, rage, euphoria and violence lurk beneath the surface, erupting in ever more frequent outbursts. The Lost Head and the Bird explores a frighteningly fast-changing, post-truth world where actions are fuelled by appeals to emotions and facts are increasingly ignored. Twelve variations turn the film into a puzzle, constantly changing itself, pulling in different directions and never remaining constant. 25
Sukanya Ghosh ISOLATION OF PECTORALIS MAJOR (2010-12) 02.04 This video collage by Sukanya Ghosh, began as a playful look at a 1911 publication, Muscle Control by Maxick, featuring instructions for body building exercises. Beginning as a quirky look at animating a certain kind of ‘instructional booklet’, the work evolved into a deliberation on the body and fitness/illness. Preoccupied with her father’s health while making this work, his scans and X-rays found their way into the video. This helped the artist to develop a deliberate take on the perception of the body and to juxtapose the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ body. She says “The final work has become for me a meditative take on the notion of physical beauty and internal atrophy.” and internal atrophy.” MAPPING THE MEMORY MANDALA | Sumakshi Singh/Camargo Foundation ISOLATION OF THE PECTORALIS MAJOR | Sukanya Ghosh
Sumakshi Singh MAPPING THE MEMORY MANDALA (2008) 06.50 Sumakshi Singh’s uses time-lapse animations as part of her installations, to take viewers into a world where physical objects appear to disintegrate with vantage point. Her works explore the bases of how we assign attention, construct meaning and perceive realities. After the death of Sumakshi’s grandfather, she drew the illusion of his living room in Delhi over the existing objects in her studio in France in dry pastels. She says. “As viewers walked into the installation, they watched themselves in a live projection where they moved through the aligned illusion of the living room. Bodies slowed down as people negotiated being in two spaces (physical and mediated) at the same time.”
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Sunil Padwal ANACOUSTIC ZONE (2021) 01.30 With regard to this animation work, Sunil Padwal says: “Instead of keeping so many visual stimuli and disturbing sounds around me, I tend to go into this zone of silence.”
Sunil Padwal DADDY LONGLEGS PLAYING CAT’S CRADLE (2021) 01.07 Speaking of the antics of the spider in this animation work, the artist remarks “I see this everyday. People are more interested in things other than what they are supposed to focus on.” THE TURNING EARTH | Sunil Padwal
ANACOUSTIC ZONE | Sunil Padwal
DADDY LONGLEGS PLAYING CAT’S CRADLE | Sunil Padwal
Sunil Padwal THE TURNING EARTH (2021) 01.31 Sunil Padwal was inspired by an orrery, a mechanical clockwork model of the solar system, which demonstrates the movement of the planets. In this animation work, he is looking at the play around the turning earth. 27
Ushnish Mukhopadhyay VIDEO FROM AUTOPSY SERIES (2019) 05.19 In this excerpt from Ushnish Mukhopadhyay’s Autopsy Series, we meet a person who may be alive, but he is kept drugged to stay out of harm’s way. He may be mentally ill and he talks to his other self, seeking understanding. The two selves visit their physical body at an autopsy and comment on its psychological existence. Animation with black and white line drawings, brain scans, images from a laryngoscopy are elements of the visual language adopted. The conversation generates questions about the essence of the person no longer present. Death is shown as a truth of life, but always governed through human actions and behaviour.
VIDEO FROM AUTOPSY SERIES | Ushnish Mukhopadhyay SWAAYATTATE | Vishal Kumaraswamy
Vishal Kumaraswamy SWAAYATTATE (AUTONOMY) (2020) 16.13 Swaayattate is an investigation into the complex entanglements of the organic and synthetic worlds. Set in a computer repair market in Bengaluru, the artist examines the nature of human-machine relationships. Vishal Kumaraswamy makes layered enquiries into notions of gender, caste and labour. Narrated in three chapters, the film traverses multiple timelines and plays out the evolution of an embedded neural network through speculations and suggestions. Vishal draws from critical reflections on surveillance and racist capitalism, and ethical concerns related to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence. These thoughts are relayed through the usage of text-based neural networks, volumetric video and sound design to create a resonating work. 28
Orbits of Desire Week 2 • 28 Nov to 4 Dec 2021
‘Orbits of Desire’ brings together video works that explore subjects of gender, relationships and performances that are circumscribed by bodily acts. The body is the medium through which we make memories or express our inner desires. What fragments of time become worthy of preserving, to what extent does one stretch limits of performativity, how do we inhabit memory and what are our limits of retention? These are questions that the videos in this section address. In the artists’ hands, the videos become sites of retention and release and effectively preserve the archives of our temporal bodies. In orchestrating strategic encounters with time, they allow us to rediscover our desires. 29
VIDEOLIST
The synopses of these videos are in the pages that follow. The screening time of the Week 2 set of videos is 3 hrs 00 mins 53 secs, so please set that time aside to view the videos during the week of 28 November to 4 December, 2021. From 5 December, the platform will switch to the subsequent week’s programme.
Abhishek Hazra LAUGHING IN A SINE CURVE 04.52 Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya MEMORY IS ALWAYS IN THE PERIPHERY 09.24 Amshu Chukki DINNER PARTY 07.38 Anjana Kothamachu NIR-ANJ-ANA 03.13 Anuradha Rudrapriya SUBTLE RESISTANCE 13.16 Ayan Biswas LIVING WITH THE LAST POTTERS OF LADAKH 10.00 Ayisha Abraham AMNESIA 03.22 Ayisha Abraham I SAW A GOD DANCE 06.48 Ayisha Abraham STRAIGHT 8 16.52 Ayisha Abraham YOU ARE HERE 06.20 Bharati Kapadia FOR SAHBA 05.14 Gaura Singh AN AFTERNOON AT THE GIRLS’ HOSTEL 03.49 Gayatri Kodikal FISH LOVE 11.27 Khandakar Ohida I WAS STILL SILENT 03.22 Khandakar Ohida THE LAST DREAM I SAW 03.35 Khushbu Patel FAILURE OF AN UNPLANNED 02.11 Kunatharaju Mrudula STAIN 03.05 Kunatharaju Mrudula STILL SMALL VOICE 01.00 Kunatharaju Mrudula THE LAST SUNSET 01.40 Kunatharaju Mrudula TRY.... TRY.... TRY.... 02.30 Kunatharaju Mrudula WHELVE 02.00 Manmeet Devgun AND WE BECAME ONE 02.07 Maya Krishna Rao IT’S EASIER NOW 02.45 Monali Meher THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE, IT IS A STATEMENT 01.00 Moonis Ahmad ACCIDENTALLY MIRACULOUS LIVES 07.12 Murari Jha THE LONGEST MARCH STRETCHED BODIES 04.24 Parashar Naik DUSTBIN OF A MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY 08.58 Sajid Wajid Shaikh WHY ARE YOU WEARING THAT STUPID MAN SUIT? 05.06 Sandeep T K AND YOU TOLD ME 03.43 Shreya Menon MY LOVE IN 200FT 02.14 Soghra Khurasani I WANT TO LIVE 01.01 Sohrab Hura BITTERSWEET 13.48 Sukanya Ghosh ISOSCELES FOREST 03.00 Tallur L N INTERFERENCE 04.00 30
Abhishek Hazra LAUGHING IN A SINE CURVE (2007) 04.52 Can one emote a mathematical curve without any ‘technological’ aid? Abhishek Hazra attempts to answer this absurd question ironically by translating a wave form mathematical curve into a sequence of continuous transformations between paroxysms of laughter and outbursts of crying, following the highly regular waves of a sine curve, forming a continuous wavy line of ‘ups and downs’. The artist attempts to reflect critically on the limits of mathematical models in grasping the complexity of real world processes.
Amshu Chukki DINNER PARTY (2018) 07.38
LAUGHING IN A SINE CURVE | Abhishek Hazra
The scene of an abandoned dinner party, overlaid with mud, overgrown with weeds, a comfortable domestic set-up reclaimed by nature. Amshu Chukki presents a scenario which looks as if the resident family and guests left abruptly in the face of a disaster. Chopped vegetables, a loaf of bread and dirty dishes sit where they were at the zero hour. The camera moves in a long fluid take with the gaze of a detective or archaeologist, looking closely at surfaces and hidden corners. The video resonates with the terror caused by extreme weather episodes.
Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya MEMORY IS ALWAYS IN THE PERIPHERY (2021) 09.24 MEMORY IS ALWAYS IN THE PERIPHERY | Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya
Memory is Always in the Periphery emerged from a collaboration work between Aditi Kulkarni and Payal Arya. They describe it as an experimental mixed reality photogrammetry film, where technology mediates self-perception. It looks at personal isolation, infused with new meaning during the pandemic. By looking at spaces through the potential of 3D scanning technologies, they try to intersect the real and the digital, going beyond an imitation of reality, to create insightful perceptions. 31
DINNER PARTY | Amshu Chukki
Anjana Kothamachu NIR-ANJ-ANA (2011) 03.13 Anjana Kothamachu records her mother performing a domestic ritual to gain the blessings of the nine planetary deities, the Navagrahas. She heaps small piles of black sesame seeds on 32 small squares of cotton fabric. These squares are then pleated to the centre and the tops are tied with thread. The tiny bundles of sesame seeds will be set alight to appease the dieties. This work is a personal exploration of the emotions associated with the making of such ritual offerings.
NIR-ANJ-ANA | Anjana Kothamachu
SUBTLE RESISTANCE | Anuradha Rudrapriya
Anuradha Rudrapriya SUBTLE RESISTANCE (2020) 13.16 YOU are looking at someone eating. You are LOOKING at someone eating. You are looking AT SOMEONE eating. You are looking at someone EATING. You are looking at HER eating. You are looking at her EATING HER FOOD. You are looking at A GIRL EATING HER FOOD. You are looking at A CHILD eating. You are looking at A DAUGHTER EATING. You are looking at A SISTER eating. You are looking at A MOTHER EATING. You are LOOKING AT A WIFE EATING HER FOOD. You are looking at A PERSON eating. You are looking at A HUMAN eating. You are LOOKING AT A WOMAN EATING. YOU ARE LOOKING AT A WOMAN EATING HER FOOD. You are looking at someone eating.
LIVING WITH THE LAST POTTERS OF LADAKH | Ayan Biswas
Ayan Biswas LIVING WITH THE LAST POTTERS OF LADAKH (2021) 10.00 This video has emerged from Ayan Biswas’s close observations of an elderly couple who practice an ancient form of pottery in the high altitudes of Likir in Ladakh. Ayan brings an intimacy to the framing of the subjects, playing with patterns of light and shadow, textures and smoke. Outdoors, snow lies on the ground and crunches underfoot. The potter kneads the clay. He partly turns the pot, and partly shapes it by hand. Ayan says that work for them is much more than a means to make a living. It is a medium of self-expression and a way to make sense of their own emotions. 32
Ayisha Abraham I SAW A GOD DANCE (2018) 06.48
Ayisha Abraham AMNESIA (2001) 03.22 So much of our memories of childhood are about a time free of complications, never to return. The events survive in our memories as images and snippets of activity, not neccesarily a plotted tale. A short experimental film by Ayisha Abraham, based on found footage of home movies and some shots in the present, possibly of the same child, now an adult.
I SAW A GOD DANCE | Ayisha Abraham
Ayisha Abraham says “The celebrated dancer Ram Gopal first came to me as an apparition from strips of 8 mm film that I found in a plastic bag outside an old house. I knew nothing about Ram Gopal when I ran the film through the projector, and he appeared through the crackled, fungusblotched surface of a 1940s 8mm film, stored away in a tin box for over 40 years.”
Ayisha Abraham STRAIGHT 8 (2005) 16.52
Ayisha Abraham YOU ARE HERE (2008) 06.20
A portrait of Bangalore resident Tom d'Aguair, his family and friends, as seen in home movies from the 1940s-50s. There are family picnics and outings, landscapes of the hills around Bangalore, an enacted spy drama, a brief segment about the dancer Ram Gopal, and an interview of Tom in his 90s, reminiscing on the changes in motion imaging technology he had seen. Abraham’s intention was to share the creative expression of an amateur filmmaker, at a time when film technology was difficult to master.
A montage of found footage, from the home movies of a 1970s Bangalore family. By splicing together shots featuring a stylish flaneur as the protagonist, Ayisha Abraham shapes a narrative around a day in the life of India in the last quarter of the 20th century. Scenes of people on the move, in Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, mark a time of optimism in the life of India. With a disjunctive soundtrack recorded from the radio, the film conveys a sense of tuning in and out of a flood of images of modern India that inhabit our subjective lives, and seem as fragile as the deteriorating 8mm film.
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YOU ARE HERE | Ayisha Abraham
STRAIGHT 8 | Ayisha Abraham
Bharati Kapadia FOR SAHBA (2021) 05.14
Gaura Singh AN AFTERNOON AT THE GIRLS’ HOSTEL (2021) 03.49
Sometimes catching up with an old friend can be about discovering more than you could have imagined. Bharati Kapadia’s phone call to her friend Sahba foregrounds the political in the personal sphere. The question posed at the outset seems to promise an answer that might somewhat soothe even the fraught present, as the two women revisit a particular memory. The short video brings to us, above all, the story of an enduring friendship between two women that is reaffirmed even as they speak.
Women’s hostels in Indian universities provide an unique ambience that frames the young adult years of the students in residence. Away from home for the first time and despite restrictions, enjoy a certain independence in the way they conduct their lives. Gaura Singh recorded life in her university hotel in February, not knowing that the lockdown would commence in March 2020, ending her hostel life abruptly. Here she has experimented with sound and visuals to represent her mixed emotions regarding the years spent at the hostel. The video explores the establishment as the lockdown sets in and only a few intrepid residents remain to finish their assignments.
FOR SAHBA | Bharati Kapadia AN AFTERNOON AT THE GIRLS’ HOSTEL | Gaura Singh
Gayatri Kodikal FISH LOVE (2014) 11.27
FISH LOVE | Gayatri Kodikal
An interspecies love story told through episodes of interstitial time, in live action and animation, inspired by Chekhov’s story Fish Love. A melancholic fish who lives at the bottom of a pond, desires to be close to a woman who visits every day. A tragic turn of events leaves the fish’s mouth torn, and a rose grows from his wound. Eons later, in another dimension, a poet wanders by the swamp, dips his feet in the pond to cool off and gets bitten by the tormented fish. Infected by a pessimistic love, he writes his first love poem. His love grows as a rose in full bloom on the spot of the bite. 34
Khandakar Ohida I WAS STILL SILENT (2020) 03.22 Khandakar Ohida’s work is marked by her concern for women, especially women whose social contexts force them to supress their thoughts and desires. The global lockdown triggered by Covid 19 disrupted lives, economies, and presented an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work. In this lockdown, women’s lives became more pressured than before. The video depicts the invisible labour of the household juxtaposed with the burden of familial duties and concerns, which increased tensions during that time.
THE LAST DREAM I SAW | Khushbu Patel
Khandakar Ohida THE LAST DREAM I SAW (2021) 03.35 I WAS STILL SILENT | Khandakar Ohida
Poised on the fine line between the spoken and the unspoken, Khandakar Ohida says her work is a call to women “to rise ... and alight onto a dream of the morrow.” A woman sits by a pond stitching a kantha, a quilt of recycled fabric. She says that she will buy a lipstick with the 100 rupees the handiwork will fetch, a wish her husband refused to indulge. She could earn upto 250 rupees a day as a labourer but she can’t, for at the work site, a man stared at her and asked her to go away with him. She gave him no response and was forced to keep away.
FAILURE OF AN UNPLANNED | Khushbu Patel
Khushbu Patel FAILURE OF AN UNPLANNED (2019) 02.11 Khushbu Patel employs medical imaging, conventionally used to create visual representations of the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention. Here she has taken a Transvaginal Ultrasound Scan to look at a human foetus. Khushbu says “The tension between attraction and revulsion has been my muse and has birthed many of my works. It is integral to my process.” She is influenced by ‘abjection’, a complex psychological, philosophical and linguistic concept developed by Julia Kristeva, that means 'the state of being cast off'. It can be understood as something that disturbs identity, system, and order, that does not respect borders, rules, and finds itself outside the hold of conventional morality. 35
Kunatharaju Mrudula STAIN (2017) 03.05 The unspoiled white space of a fresh bedsheet, perhaps represents femininity and a pomegranate traditionally symbolises fertility and domesticity. In this work, Mrudula starts with a play of tangible tension behind the stage, with shifting, gripping unseen forms crushing a pomegranate. The action may stand for a woman’s mindscape of anxious decisions, fearfully made to safeguard her position in society. The violence that she encounters in various forms is depicted in the red stains imprinted on the sheet.
Kunatharaju Mrudula THE LAST SUNSET (2019) 01.40 The mask is a representation of bodily boundaries says Kunatharaju Mrudula. It represents a cover, a denial, an act of concealment. Metaphorically, wearing a mask or even layers of masks is accepting or forcing oneself to live in fear, or in a subjugated position within the family, in public spaces, or even in relation to nature.
STAIN | Kunatharaju Mrudula
THE LAST SUNSET | Kunatharaju Mrudula
Kunatharaju Mrudula TRY.... TRY.... TRY.... (2016) 02.30 Women’s hands wave and knock urgently on the glass panels separating us from the subjects in this video of Kunatharaju Mrudula. It is as if they are asking to be rescued. Once more, we get a sense of suffocation and wilful suppression. The repeated signalling of the hands leaves us filled with dread. It reminds us of the threat of domestic or societal violence that women live with constantly. TRY.... TRY.... TRY.... | Kunatharaju Mrudula
Kunatharaju Mrudula STILL SMALL VOICE (2021) 01.00 The video shows a recording of Kunatharaju Mrudula’s vocal chords as she reads a text on suffocation, made with a medical imaging camera placed deep inside her own throat. She raises an important question: how do we access the inner thoughts of people who are not allowed to (or) not willing to, express their thoughts? This work can be read as the struggle between suppression and free expression. 36
Manmeet Devgun AND WE BECAME ONE (2007) 02.07
Kunatharaju Mrudula WHELVE (2019) 02.00 The title Whelve is about hiding or blurring one’s thoughts and preoccupations from others, as a security measure. A dark cave holds a group of humans, communing together, wearing shamanistic masks, with ritual dolls and bone tools strewn on the ground. Suddenly, travelling lights enter the cave space, and like fireflies, illuminate tiny areas. According to the artist, these are indicators of hope for an eventual balanced and collective way of living emerging from this dark human mound.
Relationships, experiences of love and betrayal are the subject of this work. Despite all the wounds created/perceived/gifted by one or the other partner, there were intimacies, expressed as canine “licks” of comfort. The artist says: "Searching for solace from each other, we became one."
AND WE BECAME ONE | Manmeet Devgun
IT’S EASIER NOW | Maya Krishna Rao
Maya Krishna Rao IT’S EASIER NOW (2021) 02.45 Theatre artist Maya Krishna Rao experimented with short videos during 2020-21, as immediate responses to significant events occurring in the country, the pandemic, and the impacts these had on people’s lives. Here Maya first created a text and invited designer Mansi Thapliyal to explore lockdown and confinement through suggestive charcoal drawings or photographs of household objects which were layered over with drawing. Text, voice, drawings, photographs, moving images and music come together in this ironic take on how life in confinement is only seemingly peaceful – the disturbance in the world outside is ever-present.
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Monali Meher THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE, IT IS A STATEMENT (2020) 01.00 This video is a collection of momentary fragments and transitory metaphors, created by keeping a perspective on each second of the 60 seconds that make up this work. Monali Meher feels that “Accumulation of mediated video and audio frames controlled by media technologies creates universality, velocity and reduces our being to remnants.” She says that the moments of abruptness are intentional, to share the experience of fictive reality, emotions and interactivity through the videocast.
THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE, IT IS A STATEMENT | Monali Meher
Murari Jha THE LONGEST MARCH STRETCHED BODIES (2020) 04.24 Murari Jha explores the argument that while we can mobilise our own painful experiences to empathise with the pain of others, somehow we can never fully grasp such experiences in their specificities. The video offers a bricolage of human body parts, highlighting the labours of the parts, without reference to the whole body. These parts, like amputated limbs, appear to helplessly carry on with their functions, until they are transfigured into bodyscapes. At this point it is no longer possible to say whether the body is human, an animal, an object or a landscape. Jha says that these painful abstractions can act as openings for a general empathy, and simultaneously indicate the limits of that empathetic outreach.
ACCIDENTALLY MIRACULOUS LIVES | Moonis Ahmad
Moonis Ahmad ACCIDENTALLY MIRACULOUS LIVES (2021) 07.12 Ahmad stitches together 2D images into 3D reconstructions with the technique of photogrammetry. The subjects are people living in a state of exception. The stitching of images, possible at some points and broken and fractured at others, acts as an allegory of the impossible stitch, behind which the stories, histories and regional figures become inaccessible. Yet their stories linger, between the sayable and the unsayable. The work creates a sensibility of what it is to live through and make sense of the experience of the state of exception, and attempts to mark the lives that militantly persist to live against this condition. The images move away from representation towards imagining speculative relationships between landscapes, gatherings and lives, that are otherwise rendered invisible.
THE LONGEST MARCH STRETCHED BODIES | Murari Jha
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Sajid Wajid Shaikh WHY ARE YOU WEARING THAT STUPID MAN SUIT? (2021) 05.06
DUSTBIN OF A MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY | Parashar Naik
Parashar Naik DUSTBIN OF A MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY (2021) 08.58
The protagonist is a teenager from Aurangabad who was earning well, entertaining kids at weddings and birthdays dressed as Doraemon the Robot Cat. Since the pandemic, he is struggling to keep going. Various symbolisms borrowed from Doraemon, the Japanese manga series, enter the narrative of this video, like the 'Anywhere Door', a pink door that allows the one who turns the key to reach any place that she or he thinks of. Newsreel footage of scenes from an unidentified war come on the screen. Sajid Wajid Shaikh invites viewers to dissect the narrative and give interpretations.
An attempt to hold a mirror to society through its waste, more particularly video waste or that of discarded images. Parashar Naik contends that much can be understood of a person or a family by going through what they discard in their dustbins. Various videos, images, glitchy frames and audio segments come together in a montage to create an experience which is like going through the contents of a digtal dustbin.
WHY ARE YOU WEARING THAT STUPID MAN SUIT? | Sajid Wajid Shaikh AND YOU TOLD ME | Sandeep T K
Sandeep T K AND YOU TOLD ME (2018) 03.43 A young man is seen rushing into the sea at sunset, in what looks like an exuberant expression of joy. He goes on, deeper and deeper into the ocean. The viewer starts to feel something is amiss, as he keeps on moving further away. And You Told Me is part of Sandeep T K’s narratives of same-sex love. The film closes on a walkway on the side of a flyover. Rush hour crowds move towards camera, a human sea this time, while the protagonist goes the opposite way. 39
Shreya Menon MY LOVE IN 200FT (2019-20) 02.14 This student film was inspired by a poem about two people falling in love without ever meeting in person, until they finally do. Shreya Menon translates the words of the poem into a visual metaphor, a representation of the gaps between the protagonists. “We were chasing opposite directions whilst walking backwards.” Shreya says Maya Deren’s and M C Escher’s work led her to explore of space and time as dimensions within the boundaries of the film frame. I WANT TO LIVE | Soghra Khurasani
Soghra Khurasani I WANT TO LIVE (2014) 01.01
MY LOVE IN 200FT | Shreya Menon
Soghra Khurasani documents an installation using the medium of fire and earth. The work is a salute to Jyoti Singh or ‘Nirbhaya’, gang-raped and tortured by six men in Delhi in 2012. The title comes from words that Jyoti said to her mother as she lay dying in hospital. Soghra carved out shallow troughs in an open ground with the words “I want to live”. The installation was set afire by the artists working with her. This action was a symbolic cremation to honour Jyoti. The photographs on Page 42 show the preparations made by the artist and her colleagues to stage this work.
BITTERSWEET | Sohrab Hura
Sohrab Hura BITTERSWEET (2019) 13.48 Sohrab Hura focuses on an intimate view of family life in Bittersweet, particularly the relationship between his mother who was diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia and her dog, Elsa. He uses what he calls the 'halfmoving' form of combining still and moving images. Photographed and filmed during a period of ten years, Hura says that the project turned into a method of confronting the realities at home and a search for meaning and closure. 40
Sukanya Ghosh ISOSCELES FOREST (2018) 03.00
ISOSCELES FOREST | Sukanya Ghosh
Tallur L N INTERFERENCE (2019) 04.00
TTallur L N captures the dusting process of a historic carpet at Junagadh Museum, when it was shifted from the palace in Junagadh, Gujarat. The ornate textile was produced during the late 1800s by the inmates of the Junagadh Central Jail. They were freedom fighters during the struggle for independence. The carpet is in two pieces. The second piece, 30 feet x 12 feet in size, was used for this recording. The artist used a 4 K camera and would like you to experience this video in a life-size projection of 30 feet x 12 feet. 41
INTERFERENCE | Tallur L N
Sukanya Ghosh creates an optical collage in this work, a loop of images dissolving into each other in a combination of animated gestures. The name echoes mathematician Richard Bellman’s 1955 Forest Problem (“What is the best path to follow in order to escape a forest of known dimensions?”) She says that “the overlapping and intermingling of images fading in and out of each other, seem to look for new propositions, following segmented routes as if seeking out the best possible path to freedom.” The images are taken from family photographs, of unknown people and places – where the artist seeks timelessness and a sense of an ‘unbound place’, to create new narratives.
Preparations for installation of I WANT TO LIVE | Soghra Khurasani
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Peripheries of the Real Week 3 • 5 to 11 Dec, 2021
This segment presents videos that explore environmental aspects, especially in the context of the growing awareness of irreversible change. The signs remain unattended for the most part or even lost from our attention due to inadvertent neglect. The virtual space today extends our awareness into the digital netherworld. Such conditions highlight instances of not only parallel realities but also the surreal, hyperreal or para-real. The pandemic inverted humanity’s sense of security by locking us within our homes and producing an irrational fear of the outside world. We found that absences and presences interchanged their roles in our existences. The videos here attempt to bring us to terms with a sense that the fields of reality seem to be bound by a mythical horizon. 43
VIDEOLIST
The synopses of these videos are in the pages that follow. The screening time of the Week 3 set of videos is 3 hrs 06 mins 44 secs, so please set that time aside to view the videos during the week of 5 December to 11 December, 2021. From 12 December, the platform will switch to the subsequent week’s programme.
Anjana Kothamachu ANIMA ANIMUS 03.01 Ankur Yadav AN UNIMAGINABLE EMPTY SPACE 06.02 Anuradha Rudrapriya PAUSE IN THE SUBLIME 08.24 Archana Hande INDEFINITE 05.29 Ashok Meena OPIUM 05.08 Biswajit Das 100 DAYS OF ANIMATION 14.42 C Chaithanya THE FINAL FLUTTER 01.35 Devadeep Gupta ABSENT RIVER 13.57 Devadeep Gupta NORMALISATION OF A DISASTER 09.05 Dharmendra Prasad BIOGRAPHY OF A FIELD 08.40 Hetal Chudasama DEEPEST DEMARCATION 09.52 Karthik K G SEISMIC VIBRATO 04.54 Pooja Iranna WE ARE GOING GREEN 08.53 Prabhakar Pachpute DARK CLOUD OF THE FUTURE 03.02 Prabhakar Pachpute EARTHWORK OF HADSATI 03.37 Pranay Datta MOMENTS BEFORE THE FALL 06.33 Prantik Basu HAWA MAHAL 14.34 Pratul Dash STORY OF A LANDSCAPE 05.28 Ranbir Kaleka HOUSE OF OPAQUE WATER 10.34 Rohan Chavan ENTROPYCITY 02.33 Saba Hasan DEATH WILL COME LIKE A SHADOW 02.11 Shreya Menon RABBIT HOLE 01.41 Surekha NOBODY’S WALLS 03.00 Tushar Waghela PHANTOM OF A FERTILE LAND 08.00 Tushar Waghela THE HOME 05.45 Veer Munshi LOCKDOWN I 02.11 Veer Munshi LOCKDOWN II 04.07 Vibha Galhotra CLEANSING 13.44 44
Anjana Kothamachu ANIMA ANIMUS (2012-15) 03.01
ANIMA ANIMUS | Anjana Kothamachu
Anima Animus is part of a site-specific video installation That which is and is not by Anjana Kothamachu. The title refers to the simultaneously substantial and insubstantial nature of daydreams.The artist perceives fantasising as a universal tendency, very much a part of the living of our lives. She asserts that we all engage in creating fictions, ranging from frivolous reveries to magnificent plots. Bringing together diverse objects, exotic and mundane, she highlights the continual interlacing of the lived and imagined.
Ankur Yadav AN UNIMAGINABLE EMPTY SPACE (2020) 06.02
Ankur Yadav probes the relationship between human beings and the earth in this work. In the process he unravels a concept of unimaginable space. It is narrated obliquely and shown indirectly through snippets from a fragmented, dystopian reality experienced by the protagonist. The texts and soundscape are intended to be indicative of displacement and an unstoppable descent into dizzying depths of illusions. The video emphasises seeing and existence, interposing sense perception with the knowledge systems and control mechanisms of a dystopian world. AN UNIMAGINABLE EMPTY SPACE | Ankur Yadav
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PAUSE IN THE SUBLIME | Anuradha Rudrapriya
Anuradha Rudrapriya PAUSE IN THE SUBLIME (2020) 08.24
Our present life is characterised by a sense of fleeting time – the speed of which we seem to have adopted subconsciously and rather quickly. Our thoughts too escape without halting for a moment. Anuradha feels that such hurriedness and urgency is fabricated in order to attune oneself with the typified everyday life. She feels that such a life, which was once unusual has now become the new normal. Pause in the sublime serves as an extended and essential element of inaction. The author argues that such inaction “does not necessarily lead to silence because once you pause, many other things surface…You listen, see, understand things mindfully and much more clearly. You let your surrounding speak to you as if your absence in existence has activated everything around you”.
Archana Hande INDEFINITE (2021) 05.29 Archana Hande’s ongoing video diary called Indefinite talks about many layers, “an indefinite diary of time, anxiety and uncertainty of space.” Revisiting recent memories, the artist feels as though we are ending a period of enforced rest. However, reliving the past can lead to an overwhelming feeling that every moment has to be claimed or it would be irretrievably lost. This leads to issues of the interpretation of the past, and the possiblity that some may seek to manipulate it to suit themselves. Archana says that the past has started looking to her like a fable, a time that has slipped irretrievably out of reach, and she wonders if it should it be revived.
OPIUM | Ashok Meena
Ashok Meena OPIUM (2019) 05.08 Set in a temple town, a place of pilgrimage, at the time of a festival where large numbers of pilgrims come to celebrate, Ashok Meena takes us through the play of a rivetting range of emotions.Striking images flow in a montage that takes in everything around the pilgrimage site simultaneously. Is the title the artist’s nod to Karl Marx’s remark about religion being the opium of the people? This was part of Marx's argument that religion was constructed to calm uncertainties, functioning similarly to opium in an injured person – reducing the pain and providing pleasant illusions, but ultimately hooking the person into dependence.
INDEFINITE | Archana Hande
100 DAYS OF ANIMATION | Biswajit Das
Biswajit Das 100 DAYS OF ANIMATION (2020-21) 14.42 When India went into lockdown in March 2020, Biswajit Das taught himself animation. Beginning with hand drawn forms, in crayons or water colour, he painted frame by frame on paper, then coloured, scanned and animated these digitally. He decided to challenge himself to a run of 100 days of animation. With admirable discipline, he created and posted 100 videos on social media,one every single day, without a break. The subjects are from daily life, sometimes combining drawings with live shots. The joyousness and range also reflects his buoyant state of mind at this uncertain time. Biswajit has edited a special compilation for VAICA with handwritten inter-titles. 46
Devadeep Gupta ABSENT RIVER (2021) 13.57
THE FINAL FLUTTER | C Chaithanya
C Chaithanya THE FINAL FLUTTER (2021) 01.35 Chaithanya draws a parallel between a butterfly’s existence and that of medical professionals like herself during the pandemic. With hand gestures, a candle and reflected images she makes a rivetting presentation on her feelings of helplessness inside a Covid ward. The work revisits Chaithanya’s moments of realisation when she felt like a mere witness in a white coat, unable to make much of a difference under the circumstances.
Devadeep Gupta looks at the intimate relationship of contradictions between the Brahmaputra River and the people living on its banks, in Majuli Island in Assam. Despite devastating floods, communities continue to cling to the river. This may be due to emotional bonds, and also because of a lack of resources and the confidence to move on and re-establish life elsewhere. To an outsider, the consequences to individuals may appear self-inflicted, but the compulsions may have other roots. This is part of the artist’s ongoing project to study the toxic yet thriving relationship between the river and the people.
ABSENT RIVER | Devadeep Gupta NORMALISATION OF A DISASTER | Devadeep Gupta
Devadeep Gupta NORMALISATION OF A DISASTER (2020) 09.05 Devadeep Gupta observes the impact of the Baghjan oil blowout of 2020 on the people in the vicinity. In this massive gas and oil leak, an Oil India Limited oilfield burned from May to November, 2020. In this stark video, largely illuminated by the glow of firelight, Devadeep identifies three groups: local residents, the front-line workers, and a third group, the disaster tourists, who turned the blowout into a spectacle – to be posed with and shared on their networks. The disaster tourists reinforced the normalisation of a disaster that caused the displacement of more than 1,600 families and caused extensive environmental damage to the adjacent forest and wetlands in Assam. 47
Dharmendra Prasad BIOGRAPHY OF A FIELD (2020) 08.40 Dharmendra comments on the environmental, occupational, behavioural and psychological shifts he has seen in Nadaon village in Buxar district of Bihar. The work was realised in a process that he describes as a lonely tillage that took up time, through seasons, in crises and in solitude. During an afternoon’s walk, there was a moment of epiphany. He says the work sprouted from the cells of his body, and the breath of the field was then “chased by the muted observer (presumably himself) with cell phone camera".
DEEPEST DEMARCATION | Hetal Chudasama
Hetal Chudasama DEEPEST DEMARCATION (2021) 09.52 Hetal Chudasama reflects on the death, loss and trauma following the lockdown. She looks at the plight of migrant workers who trekked to their villages without organised support or facilitation from the authorities. The work meditates on the bleak reality of a world where such neglect is tolerated and accommodated by wide sections of the people, the media and the state. The artist says: “A prayer is performed. A prayer born out of the cacophony of shrieks in the air. A way to come to terms with unbearable loss. The loss of dignity, faith, and the right to life itself.”
BIOGRAPHY OF A FIELD | Dharmendra Prasad
SEISMIC VIBRATO | Karthik K G
Karthik K G SEISMIC VIBRATO (2021) 04.54 A musical piece from a pocket-sized synthesiser serenades a 3Dpoint-cloud model of the Supreme Court of India building. Shaking and turning it, the artist reveals photogrammetric layers of the site from all possible angles. Karthik’s works play with layers of digital images to become moving images and interactive installations,drawing references from historical discourses, scientific speculations and fictional iterations. He enjoys contemplating the aesthetics of digital modulations and speculative futures. 48
Prabhakar Pachpute DARK CLOUD OF THE FUTURE (2014) 03.02
Pooja Iranna WE ARE GOING GREEN (2012) 08.53 This is Pooja Iranna’s take on the idea of ‘green wash’. Her contention is that while environmentally aware societies all over the world have started putting limits on the environmental fallouts of industrial activity, commercial interests have responded by applying a ‘green wash’ on everything. This is a superficial construct to make their wares sell – be they foodstuffs, buildings, stocks and shares, or anything else. The artist wonders if people are getting trapped in its allure.
DARK CLOUD OF THE FUTURE | Prabhakar Pachpute
EARTHWORK OF HADSATI | Prabhakar Pachpute
Dark Cloud of the Future was made by Prabhakar Pachpute about our shared futures: the hope of prosperity and strength, yet fear of destruction. Layers of existence seem to mimic the circumstances relating to the politics of land ownership. Dark clouds travel from distant horizons, their darkness masking unknown depths, such as the destruction that comes with power. Simultaneously, there is a search for a better world. The eyes, binoculars and the wind are indicators of forces seeking change. But as solutions are found, we have to be alert to the destruction that may follow.
Prabhakar Pachpute EARTHWORK OF HADSATI (2013) 03.37
WE ARE GOING GREEN | Pooja Iranna
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Chandrapur District in Maharashtra has changed dramatically due to coal mining. In Earthwork of Hadsati, Prabhakar Pachpute’s focus is the impact of mining on farmlands. Because of the continual extraction of coal for decades and the impact of other ancillary industries, many fields and villages have merged with coal mines. Over time, these have turned into dangerous, contaminated, landscapes. Farmers have no option but to sell their land and migrate. Pachpute uses an unfolding hand fan as a wipe, indicating continuous recreation of circumstances, something perhaps to inject irony into the situation.
Pranay Datta MOMENTS BEFORE THE FALL (2019-20) 06.33
MOMENTS BEFORE THE FALL | Pranay Datta
Pranay simulates ecological conditions in this work. From the generation of a cumulonimbus cloud as a starting point, we are led to a cloudburst. This natural phenomenon is explored through the lens and the brain of a machine, with the artist keying in numbers and codes to create approximations. The software estimates the resultant downpour from the cloudburst. Through painting, video, computer-generated imagery and video sculptures, Datta invites viewers to an immersive collision between our collective futures, the past and alternate versions of our present.
STORY OF A LANDSCAPE | Pratul Dash
Pratul Dash STORY OF A LANDSCAPE (2010) 05.28 This video addresses the subject of ecological disaster. Pratul has used two of his paintings, Man with a Camera and Conch Blower to anchor the narrative, within a constructed world. In this landscape, initially beautiful and inhabited by birds, a photographer documents the scene. Pollution kills the birds and a conch blower signals a warning. Dash uses various visual strategies to convey the idea of impending doom until the landscape turns black and nothing is visible.
HAWA MAHAL | Prantik Basu
Prantik Basu HAWA MAHAL (2014)14.34 Hawa Mahal is an impressionistic portrayal of an ordinary day in a Haryana village. A land surveyor goes about taking measurements, moving around on his scooter with his cumbersome tripod. He dreams of his village where trees are being numbered. The radio forecasts a thunderstorm. With off-centred compositions, small movements and shifting focal planes, Basu reveals vistas, keeping the viewer engrossed. Recurring lyrical images in this work, like gambolling peacocks, buffalos taking a soak, geometrically planted eucalyptus plantations, a woman kneading clay to make bricks, the brick kiln spewing carbon-laden smoke, a dust storm, dark skies, rain and thunder, get loaded with meaning and fall into a sensuous pattern. 50
Ranbir Kaleka HOUSE OF OPAQUE WATER (2012-13) 10.34 The islands of the Sundarbans are being swallowed by ever rising sea-levels, due to human-caused calamities. Ranbir Kaleka recounts: “Sheikh Lal Mohan, whose name is a curious mix of Muslim and Hindu names, took us to the spot on the sea under which his submerged village lies.” He has returned to the site, but there is no true returning. In a ritual of reclamation, he sculpts a mud map of his village and house. In a kind of overflow from reality, invented events are enacted in fictive spaces which project the imaginary interiority of the protagonist. The binaries of art and documentary are dissolved to point to another kind of truth.
ENTROPYCITY | Rohan Chavan HOUSE OF OPAQUE WATER | Ranbir Kaleka
Rohan Chavan ENTROPYCITY (2020) 02.33 In the physical sciences, entropy is a way of measuring the amount of order present or absent in a system. The second law of thermodynamics suggests that going forward in time, the entropy of an isolated system tends to move from order to chaos. Rohan Chavan sees entropy or the quality of ‘entropicity’ as a way of distinguishing the past from the future. The systems that govern our lives tend to follow the same principles. He feels that we are being turned into accumulators for – and observers of – an uncertain future. Much of this video was shot during the lockdown months of April to July, 2020. 51
Shreya Menon RABBIT HOLE (2019) 01.41 This work attempts to represent how the dynamics unleashed by power may pressurise and compel people to adopt beliefs and ways of living that they may not be inclined to follow otherwise. The characters and settings are so designed by Shreya that the collective becomes the protagonist and the environment takes centre stage. The walls of this world are made of reflective surfaces that reaffirm to the inhabitants that they cannot disobey orders and there is no escape. Finally, when they do break out, it is a wonderful moment of liberation. RABBIT HOLE | Shreya Menon DEATH WILL COME LIKE A SHADOW | Saba Hasan
Saba Hasan DEATH WILL COME LIKE A SHADOW (2021) 02.11 Death Will Come Like A Shadow is part of Saba Hasan’s recent selfportrait series, comprising photographs and videos. She responds to the social isolation caused by the pandemic and turns the camera on the most constant subject, her own self. She holds our attention with long panning movements and draws us into the spell of her revelations. A solitary experience of the passing of time, created with painterly textures and overlapping images, sounds and plays of light. This sense of quiet intimacy is heightened by the artist’s compelling gaze and her voice reciting her poem, adding intensity and depth to the otherwise minimal visuals. 52
Surekha NOBODY’S WALLS (2008) 03.00
PHANTOM OF A FERTILE LAND | Tushar Waghela
Tushar Waghela PHANTOM OF A FERTILE LAND (2009) 08.00 Parental property, inheritance and hereditary occupations are the subject of this work. Tushar looks at the intolerable pain of broken farmers and the darkness behind the ‘development’ that is displacing them. While farmers may get compensation when forced to sell out, they lose their identity, and sense of belonging. This is the overwhelming concern in the video. THE HOME | Tushar Waghela
The red spit marks of paan on the streets and walls of the city are the reminiscent of an action painting says Surekha. Chewing pan is perhaps incomplete without this act of spitting on walls. The stains are most commonly found on corner walls, taken as sites granted for such accumulations. Surekha thinks that the act of spitting is reminiscent of societal and creative marks. Though it is close to graffiti, a public display of private desires and doubts, spitting is an expression of those who refuse to belong to a shared system of hygiene.
NOBODY’S WALLS | Surekha
Tushar Waghela THE HOME (2015) 05.45 Tushar Waghela shows us that our homes are also homes to billions of other living beings living in and around what we consider our space. They may remain out of our vision, but their sounds and signs continuously register their presence in the margins of our awareness. We barely realise that long before we came into existence, for millions of years, this planet has been their domicile. This may lead one to think that they will persist long after we have erased ourselves out of existence through our insensitive ways of dealing with the planet, its life forms and human society.
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Veer Munshi LOCKDOWN I (2021) 02.11 Lockdown I is a reflection on the uncertainties experienced during the pandemic. Veer Munshi introspects within to find that very little about our lives is actually constant or certain. The exposition is set in Veer’s installation of abandoned machines from a silk reeling factory in Solina, Kashmir. The factory is lying defunct since 1988, when political developments led to the halt of a prosperous industry employing thousands. A figure walks past the wrecks of the silk reeling machines reflecting on the lockdown caused by a virus and the one induced by ideologies, over three decades ago.
CLEANSING | Vibha Galhotra
Vibha Galhotra CLEANSING (2016) 13.44
LOCKDOWN II | Veer Munshi
Veer Munshi LOCKDOWN II (2021) 04.07 The title Lockdown II refers to the confinement endured by millions across the globe during the pandemic. The artist has experienced stay-at-home orders and curfews many times in his native Kashmir during the last three decades of conflict. Though the reasons were completely different in origin, he sees similarities in the effects of confinement in both instances.
Cleansing reflects Vibha Galhotra's deep involvement with issues of the air and the earth. She examines the phenomenon of escalating dust levels, due to the rapid rise in mining and transport. The video is based on the mundane act of cleaning a potted plant laden with dust. While cleaning with clinical precision, Galhotra shows that the layer of dust mixed with the oily surface of the leaves, had shielded the plant from the processes of photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration and absorption of phytotoxic gaseous pollutants, rendering it unable to produce oxygen. The artist shares this realisation directly and urgently, communicating the critical situation that all life forms are caught in. 54
Urban Heterotopias Week 4 • 12 to 18 Dec, 2021
Urban heterotopias make themselves vividly apparent through the videoscapes in this set of works. These spaces create their own psychogeographies within the shared domain of the city. Inevitably, the city is the most charged site for the performance of politics. It is the ground where multiple ideologies collide, intertwine, repel and dance with each other. What are some forms of co-habitation and contestation that take place within the city? The videos in the concluding session closely contemplate the urban condition as well as actions that consistently rework the landscapes of our everyday encounters. Can these revelations readdress our equation with the urban space, and alter our fields of vision? 55
VIDEOLIST
The synopses of these videos are in the pages that follow. The screening time of the Week 4 set of videos is 2 hrs 46 mins 35 secs, so please set that time aside to view the videos during the week of 12 to 18 December, 2021. These videos can be viewed from 12 December till midnight on 18 December when the festival comes to an end.
Aakash Dubey IN SEARCH OF THE LOST LINES 10.41 Abeer Khan CHILD-LOCK 02.12 Abeer Khan MAKAAN 04.24 Aditi Kulkarni FLOWER POT 02.29 Amitesh Grover DATA MESSIAHS 16.00 Amol Patil REST 02.31 Ashok Meena ICHIGO ICHIE 03.55 Babu Eshwar Prasad ON THE ROAD 05.12 Chinmoyi Patel THE AFTERTASTE 06.05 Gigi Scaria AMUSEMENT PARK 05.24 Gigi Scaria POLITICAL REALISM 03.35 Jahangir Jani COMPOSITION1021 00.48 Jaideep Mehrotra HIVE 02.28 Jaideep Mehrotra MICROCOSM 02.25 Katyayani Gargi THE CENTRE DOES NOT HOLD (PATTERNS EMERGE) 04.10 Katyayini Gargi THE REITERATORwS 02.05 Kush Badhwar GEOGRAPHIES OF PRODUCTION 15.10 Kush Badhwar WORK STARTS NOW 09.14 Moonis Ahmad MATERIAL FOR A LOVE LETTER TO COMRADES FROM THE SUBCONTINENT 03.35 Pooja Iranna ANOTHER NEW BEGINNING 07.50 Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee FAR FROM HOME 02.03 Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee HOMECOMING 02.03 Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee SURVIVAL ENGINE 01.30 Sheba Chhachhi MOVING THE CITY 05.58 Soghra Khurasani DO THIS DO THAT 03.18 Sukanya Ghosh A CHAIR WALKS INTO A LANDSCAPE 05.34 Surabhi Sharma AIRPLANE DESCENDING ON JARI-MARI 04.30 Surabhi Sharma TRACING BYLANES 16.50 Suresh B V CANES OF WRATH 03.17 Swagata Bhattacharyya ROAD SCENE 03.19 Tushar Waghela THE GHOST TAXONOMY 04.57 Ushnish Mukhopadhyay WHERE WAS I LAST NIGHT? 04.03 56
Aakash Dubey IN SEARCH OF THE LOST LINES (2021) 10.41 Aakash Dubey examines the cultural landscapes shaping a city's geography and the involvement of the public in its making. In this work, he looks at a corner of Vadodara through the twin lens of satellite imagery and on-ground photography. Aakash’s explorations point to how seemingly innocuous terms such as ‘urban beautification’ may be loaded with other meanings.
CHILD-LOCK | Abeer Khan
Abeer Khan CHILD-LOCK (2020) 02.12 Produced during the lockdown, this video plays with the notion of freedom of mind. According to the artist, a child-lock is an expression that implies a lock for bodily safety, set by a child’s guardians. However the mind cannot be locked, and opening one’s mental child-lock allows one to time-travel, from the present to the past and into the future. The afternoons of the lockdown reminded her of childhood summers of daydreaming on fantasy scenarios and projecting these onto the walls during hot and humid afternoons.
IN SEARCH OF THE LOST LINES | Aakash Dubey MAKAAN | Abeer Khan
Abeer Khan MAKAAN (2021) 04.24 In this work by Abeer Khan we see the realities of living in Mumbai's vertical microapartments. As part of the process of ‘rehabilitation’ of slum dwellers, the government’s Slum Rehabilitation Authority has built housing for the evicted residents of slums. Filmed entirely from the exterior, the visual narrative of the residents’ lives spilling out into the common passageways of the building hints at the limited space inside the flats. 57
Aditi Kulkarni FLOWER POT (2015) 02.29 Aditi Kulkarni tells a story that projects parallel and relative dimensions coexisting in space and time, with simple mimetic devices. An innocuous-seeming vase of tuberoses appears on a table. Sirens wail outside as the flowers are plucked, enjoyed even, despite the disquiet. War sounds and explosions break out and the vase becomes a disowned object, with two players trying to push it away from themselves. The artist tries to create a dialogue between the multiple spaces and times that simultaneously exist all around us.
REST | Amol Patil
Amol Patil REST (2020) 02.31
Amol Patil misses a certain sense of conviviality on the streets of Mumbai. In his childhood, there were public spaces where avant garde dramas were performed, street corners where young activists staged plays on urgent issues, and at night, students would study under street lamps. In the video, he perches a miniature of himself on the electrical fitting of a lamp post, as he paces about and sits to read a book. In scaling himself, Amol reflects on how overpowering the city is becoming, with towering buildings and flyovers being built continuously. He wonders if there will be a space in the future where he could spend time comfortably.
DATA MESSIAHS | Amitesh Grover
Amitesh Grover DATA MESSIAHS (2017) 16.00
FLOWER POT | Aditi Kulkarni
Amitesh Grover foregrounds the unprecedented volume of labourintensive digital service industries in South Asia. The work features two Beckettian-style Initiation Day experts, who induct and train hundreds of workers for IT companies every month. Their twisting, gambolling, purposeful bodies are seen alongside the architecture of the dreams they propound. The building and the two gate keepers seem engaged in a dance, staging a scene from the theatre of the absurd, till exhaustion interrupts and brings them to a suicidal halt. The video was commissioned by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. 58
Babu Eshwar Prasad ON THE ROAD (2021) 05.12
ICHIGO ICHIE | Ashok Meena
Ashok Meena ICHIGO ICHIE (2020) 03.55
Babu revisits footage recorded across a decade, beginning with a salute to cinema history with a circular iris frame. Elements in the passing landscapes and movements of traffic on the road, are spliced and layered with glitches and other images. Dotted with construction equipment and travelling labour crews in the lorries, the road seem to be transitory spaces caught in the throes of development. “The road is never still – it hurtles towards promised futures and irreversible change and disruption. The road can literally take us anywhere”, says the artist.
Urban living, represented by the apartments of Mumbai with hundreds of windows and small signs of the life of the inhabitants inside, is the terrain of this video by Ashok Meena. Enigmatic visuals hold our attention as we try to make sense of them as we traverse the tower blocks of the city and go beyond with glimpses of the sea, and other recognisable landmarks. A day and night intervene. The tour ends with a ride on a Ferris wheel at night, in a funfair lit as bright as day with the apartment towers in the background. ON THE ROAD | Babu Eshwar Prasad THE AFTERTASTE | Chinmoyi Patel
Chinmoyi Patel THE AFTERTASTE (2017) 06.05 Chinmoyi Patel looks at a flyover that has displaced an iconic banyan tree sculpture by the artist Nagji Patel from a prominent traffic junction in the city of Vadodara. The narrator takes on the role of a tour guide taking viewers on a tour of the flyover and its surroundings, treating it as a freestanding, interactive work of art. Against the backdrop of development and displacement, the humorous, playful and absurd narrative questions the compulsions to tear down what has gone before and to replace it with something new. The artist reflects on the desires concealed within the concrete, sold to us as transformation and progress. 59
Gigi Scaria AMUSEMENT PARK (2009) 05.24 Gigi Scaria thinks that urbanism may represent the spiritual existence of contemporary human society. Amusement Park is a logical extension of this allconsuming urbanism. In this park, deserted at present while the rides run on, he says of the vanished people, “ ... they crawled, flew, fell and screamed with a momentary transcendence of the self”.
AMUSEMENT PARK | Gigi Scaria POLITICAL REALISM | Gigi Scaria
Jahangir Jani COMPOSITION1021 (2021) 00.48 In this humorous take on the reversal of roles, a tough looking man in a khaki uniform boards an auto rickshaw with a goat in his arms. The goat jumps out of the vehicle eventually, with no sign of the man. Jahangir Jani says that the video is about the triumph of the “the meek, the voiceless, the oppressed and the marginalised”. COMPOSITION1021 | Jahangir Jani
Gigi Scaria POLITICAL REALISM (2009) 03.35 Using the leitmotif of a pair of neighbouring doors that open and close to reveal new vistas, Gigi Scaria points to the futility of reliance on the power structures of the past and possibly, the need to build new formations in the present. 60
Jaideep Mehrotra HIVE (2009) 02.28 Hive is a time-lapse infinite loop. It is a rhythmic play with the yellow and black taxi that constitutes every fifth car in Mumbai. Mehrotra suggests the taxi may be an allegorical bee that busily builds the stores of honey in its hive. MICROCOSM | Jaideep Mehrotra HIVE | Jaideep Mehrotra
Katyayani Gargi THE CENTRE DOES NOT HOLD (PATTERNS EMERGE) (2020) 04.10 “Why does one chase after a sense of stability?” asks Katyayani. The title is an allusion to a line from WB Yeats’ poem The Second Coming. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ...” During the century since Yeats wrote it in 1919, just after World War I, the line has been borrowed by many writers. In brief, he says that time is up for humanity, the old rules no longer apply and there’s nothing to replace them. The artist says that this echoes her predicament in the present, unsure of the way the world is going. 61
Jaideep Mehrotra MICROCOSM (2014) 02.25 Our world is dominated by overwhelming population numbers. Though we are reduced to a numerical in the scheme of the universe, or as a part of a digital cloud, we humans like to bring meaning and importance to the significance of our existence. Perhaps we need to be reminded that in the end, we are a microcosm in the dance of life, a dot on a page.
THE CENTRE DOES NOT HOLD (PATTERNS EMERGE) | Katyayani Gargi
Katyayani Gargi THE REITERATORS (2021) 02.05 Looking outward from her room in a student housing complex in London, Katyayani would think of everyone in the city as living enclosed in tiny cubicles. Within each room are characters and events that are reiterated over and over again. For example, a girl repeatedly opens her mouth to say something but the speech bubble is empty, and she swallows it up in haste. The artist is trying to create a moving emotional theatre with this work. The video was conceived to be experienced as a seamless loop in wall projection, as a painting in motion.
THE REITERATORS | Katyayani Gargi
Kush Badhwar GEOGRAPHIES OF PRODUCTION (2015) 15.10 Kush Badhwar WORK STARTS NOW (2014) 09.14 Kush Badhwar records workers bringing down a huge hoarding with the largerthan-life sized image of Kalvakuntha Chandrashekar Rao, after his swearing-in ceremony as the first Chief Minister of India's 29th state, Telangana, in 2014. We see that winning an election was only the beginning, and that the real work starts after power flows into the hands of the candidate.
This video by Kush Badhwar investigates the impact of consumption on both natural resources and human bodies in Mumbai. It is part of an eponymous public art project of the Mohile Parikh Centre. The programmme provided a container for a variety of critical ideas, dialogue and actions related to the politics of water, land and food in the city.
WORK STARTS NOW | Kush Badhwar
GEOGRAPHIES OF PRODUCTION | Kush Badhwar
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Moonis Ahmad MATERIAL FOR A LOVE LETTER TO COMRADES FROM THE SUBCONTINENT (2021) 03.35 In this ongoing project using sound, digital painting and video, Moonis Ahmad addresses the absurdities associated with the taxonomic arrangement of landscapes. This is set in the context of territorial politics between nations. The composition shows the setting of a garbage dump overflowing with indestructible plastic and other waste, pollutants draining into puddles, eventually to go into the water system. With schoolchildren’s voices reciting a textbook aloud, it evokes the inherent absurdities of the so-called national imagination.
FAR FROM HOME | Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee
Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee FAR FROM HOME (2020) 02.03 Sabyasachi builds vivid imaginary worlds. Far From Home takes us to an observation deck, looking out on what looks like a amusement park, but a world of nightmares unfolds. This seems to be a system of production, not entertainment. The system appears to be using human beings to produce resources for itself. At one end, heaps of exhausted bodies are being discarded, probably to be reprocessed, an expendable part of the whole system, we realise.
MATERIAL FOR A LOVE LETTER TO COMRADES FROM THE SUBCONTINENT | Moonis Ahmad
Pooja Iranna ANOTHER NEW BEGINNING (2021) 07.50 ANOTHER NEW BEGINNING | Pooja Iranna
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Looking at the unimaginative towering structures erupting over city skylines, Pooja Iranna moves on to explore the possibilities that human societies can extend their creative energies toward, building not only living structures, but also those expressing beliefs and offering inspiration. Although we seem to have reached our zenith in many ways, she is optimistic that we humans can express our ingenuity again, when the need arises.
HOMECOMING | Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee
Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee HOMECOMING (2020) 02.03 Homecoming takes us to a dystopic future emerging perhaps, from the urban decay in our presentday cities. The setting is a corner of an urban settlement somewhere in eastern India. The action is played out on several visual planes. A man combusts into flames in an act of self-immolation, a mad man dances on a rooftop of galvanised iron sheets and a bunch of tough goons dance in a show of political strength. The scenes add up to a vision of a world on edge. Bosch’s picturisation of hell comes to mind, bringing us to the outcomes of an unequal society and skewed development.
Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee SURVIVAL ENGINE (2021) 01.30 In Survival Engine, we go to a close view of the dystopian world seen in Far From Home. At the top we see a man on a treadmill who runs the system with his bodily energy, taking sips of oxygen to keep going. Below him is a young man, watching the control panel and keeping records for the system. This gives us an insight into a system that treats citizens as fodder for its greed. Sabyasachi's process involves manipulating original and sourced images, to form new wholes from different parts, which then turn up in entirely new contexts.
SURVIVAL ENGINE | Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee
MOVING THE CITY | Sheba Chhachhi
Sheba Chhachhi MOVING THE CITY (2016) 05.58 Sheba Chhachhi stages a performance by a young woman who enacts movements drawn from yoga and dance, in public situations on the streets of Delhi. Her actions seem incongruous in the environment, yet are natural. The film creates a metaphoric sketch of the negotiations of body and subjectivity that single women in Delhi make as they traverse the city, crossing borders of class, caste and neighbourhood. The artist reminds us of the gendered nature of physical space which regulates women’s movements. Chhachhi is interested in the increased fluidity between private and public space in contemporary cityscapes that allows for new explorations, subjectivities, and possibly new forms of desire. 64
Soghra Khurasani DO THIS DO THAT (2010) 03.18 Soghra Khurasani scribbles with a marker on a white board to give free expression to her thoughts. The jottings are written, wiped out and rewritten as the dominant viewpoint is repeatedly challenged. The audio in the background has the excited chatter of female congregants at a shrine after prayers, when they are relaxed and catching up with each other. Soghra says that her work centres around the human body, the earth and issues of identity.
DO THIS DO THAT | Soghara Khurasani
A CHAIR WALKS INTO A LANDSCAPE | Sukanya Ghosh
Sukanya Ghosh A CHAIR WALKS INTO A LANDSCAPE (2017) 05.34 Sukanya Ghosh looks at the nature of leisure and holiday photographs, combining them as odd and unfamiliar configurations. She says “I construct lines of sight in fictive landscapes which are inhabited by ghostly apparitions of people long gone.” She approaches a disjunctured past by skewing perspectives, inverting vistas and fragmenting spatial geographies. The ‘ghosting’ of spaces and people in the images of the past, the considerations of times ruptured and forgotten, leads her “to deliberate on the elasticity of the spectral image.” 65
AIRPLANE DESCENDING ON JARI-MARI | Surabhi Sharma
Surabhi Sharma AIRPLANE DESCENDING ON JARI-MARI (2008) 04.30 Surabhi Sharma’s work Airplane Descending On Jari-Mari came from a response to a call from Raqs Media Collective for “images that intimate and anticipate transformations that are fundamental to the time we inhabit, yet often lie just below the surface of mainstream visibility.” Here we see an aeroplane going for a landing on the tarmac of the airport at Mumbai, skimming low over the rooftops of the densely populated slum of Jari-mari, inducing a sense of normalised anxiety in the viewer.
ROAD SCENE | Swagata Bhattacharyya
TRACING BYLANES | Surabhi Sharma
Surabhi Sharma TRACING BYLANES (2011) 16.50 Chandigarh, a city that emerged from rupture, when Punjab was cut into two with Partition, and its capital Lahore became part of Pakistan. A new capital was proposed for Indian Punjab to erase the experience of dismemberment. Renowned architect Le Corbusier was commissioned to plan and build this new capital. He brought with him the humanist ideal of an city designed for social equality. Decades later, Surabhi Sharma finds that Chandigarh is a city confused by its margins as it struggles to retain its iconic character.
Swagata Bhattacharyya ROAD SCENE (2021) 03.19 Swagata represents the road as a site of political performance in this video. He navigates the viewer through a road that is transformed into a fortified war zone. The action seems to be taking place during a time of cessation of conflict, though possibly it is not a truce. The various images in the video – a tractor purchased on a loan, barricades and wire fences, flashing images of a deity, and a stage for speeches, speak of protest and resistance. At the same time, there is a sense of continuous, sustained struggle and the road transforms itself into a site of hope. 66
Suresh B V CANES OF WRATH (2021) 03.17
Tushar Waghela THE GHOST TAXONOMY (2020) 04.57
Suresh B V says that canes are everywhere. In the hands of cops and mobs, rogues and guards, rioters, farmers and freedomfighters. Always in the front-lines when cities turn into battlegrounds, canes instill fear, to ensure silence. Nothing eludes the glare of their owners. No place feels safe. No home, no history, no institution can escape the eye of the man with the vigilant stare. The ominous mood that the cane evokes is echoed by the cry of the peacock, the black silhouettes of birds, black dust rising and scattering in the atmosphere. These elements and more act to invigorate and supplement the total effect of the video.
Tushar Waghela alludes to the complex matrix of inequality in Indian society and how we seem to have accepted it as a natural consequence of growth. Inequality is woven into our social fabric and income differences have stratified citizens into ever-expanding vertical layers, alongside the usual divisions of caste, religion and language. The leftovers of a sumptuous dinner may feed a family but the price of the meal may sustain another family for a year. The artist worries that such unpardonable insensitivity may create irreparable fissures and he wonders about the future of such an uncaring society.
CANES OF WRATH | Suresh B V
Ushnish Mukhopadhyay WHERE WAS I LAST NIGHT? (2020-21) 04.03 This work is part of Ushnish's engagement with spaces and the events within them. The protagonist comes to consciousness in an empty unfamiliar rooom with an unknown smell and tries to take stock of his situation. A space which is “moist, abandoned and decayed makes an unsettling atmosphere” says the artist. The alarming feeling caused by a loss of memory of events that may have led to the present situation, of being overwhelmed by the fear that some irretrievable damage may have been done, are explored here. WHERE WAS I LAST NIGHT? | Ushnish Mukhopadhyay
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THE GHOST TAXONOMY | Tushar Waghela
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SWAAYATTATE (AUTONOMY) | Vishal Kumaraswamy 69
artists' profiles
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AAKASH DUBEY initially took a postgraduate degree in sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. Since then, he has gravitated towards photography and moving images and a researchbased practice. He is drawn to issues of urban planning and the quality of life. He believes that infrastructural decisions inform more than just the physical city, and sees urban design as a form of regulation. Through his work, he tries to evaluate the subtle ways that the built environment contributes to the segregation of certain sections of city-dwellers.
ABHISHEK HAZRA has diverse interconnected interests that form a mesh. Social histories of science forms one strand. An ironic fascination with the lived lives of strangely persistent theoretical frameworks is another ongoing preoccupation. His recent lecture-performances explore speculative histories of various knowledge formations, through the figure of an amateur enthusiast. Hazra’s work has been exhibited widely at institutions across the world and India. He has been a Charles Wallace India Trust scholar and has received multiple awards including the 2011 Sanskriti Award for Visual Art.
ABEER KHAN is a self-taught photographer and film maker. Over the years she has acquired film making skills such as production, cinematography, editing, motion graphics and sound mixing. Most of her films have emerged from her work as a onewoman crew. She says that space is very crucial to her projects. She finds it immensely interesting to observe how characters function in their own spaces and how they create worlds of their own in the process. Both her films in the VAICA festival are centred around the notions of home, security and well being.
ADITI KULKARNI studied fine art at Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalaya, Pune. She then gathered a series of multidisciplinary experiences and established her art practice. She likes to explore key concepts in physics such as the relationship between space and time and their continuum. Interested in the role of bystanders and witnesses in given societal situations, she studies the impact of their responses. Aditi was a Charles Wallace India Trust scholar and has participated in residencies in Zambia, Egypt, the UK, Germany and France. She sometimes collaborates with Payal Arya on projects.
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PAYAL ARYA graduated from Bombay University and took up a BFA at Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts, Mumbai, followed by an MFA from Shiv Nadar University, NOIDA. Her immersive installations explore the concept of non-linear time, notions of distance, position and bodily tolerance. She tries to encourage viewers to think about their own agency. Payal has exhibited in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Kochi and Kolkata, as well as the US and Germany. She has participated in art residencies at Ladakh Arts and Media Organization in Leh, at TIFA in Pune, and online art residency Vacant Zone.
AMOL PATIL is a conceptual and performance artist. Centred on a concern for Mumbai, he researches the construct of urbanisation and the invisibility of the working class in emergent urban imaginaries. After studying visual arts at the Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts, Amol was drawn to the crossovers between performance art, kinetic installation and video installation. His recent art work is an ongoing investigation into the vibrant habitus of the chawls, workers’ housing typical of Bombay, built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He aims to build counter-memory through narratives on lost people and landscapes.
AMITESH GROVER is an award-winning interdisciplinary theatre artist based in New Delhi. His practice is anchored in the art and politics of performance and he moves beyond theatre into installation, film, digital and text-based art. Amitesh’s work engages with themes like absence/ presence, the necessity of remembering, of enacting resistance, and the embodiment of forms of knowledge that cannot be expressed in words. Amitesh is the recipient of several international grants and artist residencies, and his work is shown internationally in theatres, galleries, public spaces and on the internet. He also teaches theatre and curates programmes for performance artists.
AMSHU CHUKKI imagines new worlds through his experimental videos. His practice is site-informed and explores the intertwining of reality and fiction. Amshu’s strategy is to decipher a landscape to invoke a site. The landscape becomes the protagonist and narratives unfold onto the site. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara and is a recipient of the Inlaks Fine Arts Award, 2014. He was listed in the Forbes India 30 under 30 in 2016. Currently based in Bengaluru, he has been part of many prestigious shows and residencies both nationally and internationally.
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ANJANA KOTHAMACHU is a visual artist and practicing psychotherapist working in sculpture, video and drawing. Her practice is based on the tangible and intangible qualities of fantasies. The fantastic is a liminal space of being, and in trying to understand the role of imagination and its translation into our daily lives, she tries to highlight the interlacing of the lived and imagined. She sees fantasising as sometimes incidental and at other times, deliberately conceived with the minutest details plotted out. Anjana is on the faculty of the Wadiyar Centre for Architecture, Mysuru. She has participated in art residencies and exhibitions around the world and India.
ANKUR YADAV lives and works in Behror, near Alwar in Rajasthan. A graduate of Fine Arts from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, he pursued his postgraduate studies in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. He has worked on diverse concepts and in a range of mediums. His primary focus has been on issues, and the medium takes shape accordingly, framed by the perimeters of the space and time available. Ankur was the Inlaks Fine Art awardee for 2020, his works have been exhibited at art events in Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Pune, and Kolkata.
ANKIT RAVANI briefly studied textile design, then did his undergraduate studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts in the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara followed by an MFA from Shiv Nadar University, NOIDA. His practice involves making fragmented narratives with found objects, drawings, photographs, videos and spaces that highlight states of vulnerability. Often starting with a personal memory, his works aim to understand alienation, fragility, numbness and conflict contained in daily experiences. Performative gestures as objects, photographs or video snippets are treated as documents that delineate the presence of an absent body. Born and brought up in Mumbai, Ankit and currently lives in Bengaluru.
ANURADHA RUDRAPRIYA is a painter, printmaker, performer and video artist based in Vadodara. Educated at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, with a BFA in Painting and MFA in Printmaking, Anuradha works in multiple mediums. Through her explorations of the human body as a medium integral to her art, her work opens up to various social, economic and political facets of the human psyche. She engages with dominant cultural value systems and the experience of helplessness, pain and violence inflicted on women by patriarchy. Anuradha has been active in various residency programmes, in India and overseas and has a number of solo and group exhibitions to her credit.
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ARCHANA HANDE is an artist and curator, trained as a printmaker at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan and at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. She works in installation, drawing and video and has a wide repertoire of work to her credit. In 2000, she received the Charles Wallace India Trust Arts Award. Her work has been exhibited across India and the world at venues such as the Kunstmuseum Bern, Helsinki Art Museum, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Yokohama Triennial. She curated the Kochi Student Biennale, 2021 and is currently working on her urban archives and is documenting her personal journeys.
AYAN BISWAS is an independent documentary maker and photographer living in Ladakh, the northern-most region of India and home to some of the highest mountains in the Indian subcontinent. Originally from Kolkata, he later worked as a technical art director with a Bengaluru-based theatre group. At present, he teaches art in village schools in Ladakh, with the aim of supporting local young people to develop sources of livelihood through art and crafts. He has been staying with a potter couple in the remote village of Likir for two years, recording the day-to-day lives of the villagers.
ASHOK MEENA is an independent filmmaker and cinematographer, practicing what he calls the art of visual poetry. Born in a small village in Rajasthan, he was cut off from technology as the area had no electricity. As a reward for doing well in school, at age 12 he was gifted a camera by his father. This became a passion and he learned the basics of photography from the man from the photo studio who processed the film rolls and made photo prints. After his graduation, he studied cinematography at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Then he moved to Mumbai to make his way as a film maker.
AYISHA ABRAHAM, artist and experimental filmmaker, is based in Bengaluru. Since 2000, she has been crafting a series of short experimental films from home movies. These 8mm films existed as fragments, without a beginning or an end, and Ayisha worked over them, giving them a form. Her work has travelled to venues all over the world, including Kathmandu, New York, Cannes and Paris. Ayisha studied painting at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, at Rutgers University and the Whitney Independent Study Program in the US. Currently she is Dean, School of Media Arts & Sciences at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru.
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BABU ESHWAR PRASAD has a deep interest in exploring media like sculpture, sound, photography, video and film. He graduated in painting from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, Bangalore and has an MFA in printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. He also enjoys conducting workshops for art students. In 2014 Prasad made his feature film Gaalibeeja (Wind Seed), screened at the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image festival and the Bengaluru International Film Festival, 3rd San Francisco South Asian Film Festival and Film Columbia Festival. His second feature film Hariva Nadige Maiyella Kaalu (A running river is all legs) was completed recently.
BHARATI KAPADIA is an artist and performer whose mediums include painting, printmaking, collage, performance and video. She has engaged with the visual arts for over four decades, consistently showing original work. Dealing with issues related to inner evolution, memory and identity, her techniques include light as a crucial element. Based in Mumbai, she has shown widely in India and at international venues in New York, Boston, Nova Scotia, Vienna, Munich and Istanbul, and participated in residencies in India, Spain and the United States. She has curated art exhibitions and has been a consultant to collectors. Bharati is the founding curator of the VAICA project.
BAIJU PARTHAN works with traditional mediums alongside digital technology. His work critiques technology and its impact on human lives and experience of reality. He explores the ongoing collision between world views and ideologies and the resulting ontological fallout. Parthan's education spanned a BFA in painting, followed by studies in Botany, Comparative Mythology and Philosophy. His vocabulary is built of arcane symbols, found imagery, contemporary photographic materials and other elements, woven together to create a dense multi layered phenomenological landscape. This is expressed through computer generated virtual objects, large scale prints on metallic surfaces and 3D lenticular prints.
BISWAJIT DAS is a visual artist who has made documentary and experimental films for over a decade. Based in Guwahati, Assam, his works have been screened in national and international film festivals and in public screenings. His remarkable achievement is that when India went into lockdown in March 2020, Biswajit taught himself animation and uploaded one video every day for 100 days on social media. A compilation of these are part of VAICA 2. He is visiting faculty at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, New Delhi and Ambedkar University of Delhi, and conducts workshops in filmmaking with several organisations. .
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C CHAITHANYA is an ayurvedic physician from Palakkad, Kerala. With a master’s degree in Basic Philosophy of Ayurveda, she is currently working as a researcher. A Bharatnatyam dancer with over twenty five years of training and practice, she has performed widely across Kerala, Tamilnadu and Karnataka. She also practices 'Navarasa sadhana', a traditional form of acting. She discovered film making fairly recently, making a documentary in 2017 about a traditional practice with a deep medical aspect, carried out in a South Indian temple. The inspiration for The Final Flutter showing in VAICA came from her personal experiences of working with Covid-19 patients during the pandemic.
DEVADEEP GUPTA 's artistic practices are based on an exploration of phenomena and perspectives related to the environment and human society. He brings an ironic humour into the portrayal of the absurdities of the everyday reality of his subjects. After undergraduate studies in architecture at Jammu University, he received a Master of Fine Arts in Public Arts and New Artistic Strategies, BauhausUniversität Weimar, Germany. Living in Guwahati, Assam, Devadeep’s focus is on long-term artistic research that seeks a balance between people and landscapes. He tries to contest widespread misunderstandings of the recent changes in climate. He shares his findings through the mediums of installations, photographs and videos.
CHINMOYI PATEL works primarily with sculptural and video installations. After her BFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara she received an MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Chinmoyi’s recent exhibition venues include: Sakshi Gallery at Delhi; Space 118, Mumbai; Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai; Site Art Space, Vadodara; Conflictorium, Ahmedabad; Sluice Biennial, London; Barocode, Yangpyeong Museum, South Korea. Residencies include: Space 118, Mumbai; Changdong Art Studio, Seoul; Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila. Chinmoyi has taught at the Department of Fine Arts, South Gujarat University, Surat.
DHARMENDRA PRASAD describes his practice as the harvesting of imagination, memories, times and change. His technique is based on recording representations of orality, toil, winds, horizons and deteriorating sites. Dharmendra's outcomes are presented in the form of installations, videos, paintings, photography, texts, events, travelogues and beyond. He says his practice is born in the midst of stories of discrimination, hierarchies, chaos and silence, full of winds and dust, located between the fields of the Gangetic plains to the villages, water bodies and rainforests of northeast India. He co-founded the Guwahati-based Anga Art Collective. 76
GAURA SINGH is a visual artist and filmmaker who recently completed her Bachelor's of Design in Moving Images from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She is interested in developing an interdisciplinary filmmaking practice and wants to experiment with narratives and film language. Gaura believes that films devoid of a story structure can co-exist with scripted and planned fiction films and be viable. She hopes to make films based on Indian society, family structures and women’s issues through unique narrative styles.
GIGI SCARIA completed a BFA at the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram and his MFA at Jamia Millia University, New Delhi. Subsequently, he developed a cross-media practice, working across painting, photography, installation, sculpture and video. His work explores issues of urban development, particularly migration, economic development and urban architecture. Scaria has participated in numerous exhibitions and residencies in India and internationally. His work was represented in the Venice, Singapore and Kochi-Muziris Biennales and was included in other important curated exhibitions and museum collections.
GAYATRI KODIKAL is a visual artist and game designer, interested in the study of narratives. She works on the specificities of speculative, multilayered, entangled histories and the ephemeral. Her work leads her to world-building processes. Currently Speculative Fiction Coach at MAMA Rotterdam, Gayatri has previously worked as a freelance educator for University of Delft and Srishti School of Art and Technology. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute with filmmaking and psychology and has a Masters in Film and Video Communication Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Gayatri is a fellow at BAK Utrecht, Fellowship for Situated Practice, a collective study on spectral infrastructure.
HANSA THAPLIYAL is a graduate in film direction from the Film and TV Institute, Pune. As a film maker and a teacher, she has worked on themes such as intimacies within the family and other subjects related to women’s lives. She has sought to recontour the relationship between women and their handiwork, a form of art-making that was not taken seriously until recently. Her films Ghar Ek Studio (2017), The Outside In (2019) have been screened at numerous festivals. She has also directed Cinema ka Sapna Dekha Hai, a film that introspects on the city and the relationship of three women to cinema.
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HETAL CHUDASAMA is a visual artist working in a range of media. Spanning live-action, installation, text and object making, Hetal sees writing as a critical tool in conjunction with performance. In order to offer alternative views on realities and fiction,her artistic processes explore theatrical mechanisms of representation, performativity of language, magic and rituals. Her works are often explorations of the language of protest – whether that of individuals, or ruptures faced by vulnerable members of society. As a migrant from India to the UK, she inhabits many places, stories and many different truths that play into her works.
JAIDEEP MEHROTRA has been a presence on the art scene for over four decades, with over twenty four solo shows across the world. He experiments and works with an amalgamation of techniques he has developed, such as applying metal on canvas or creating sculptures of carbon fibre. He has worked in diverse formats, like public sculptures, short films and infinite loop videos. Jaideep is inspired by contemporary culture and gets influences for his work from music, movies and works of fiction, as well as the world around him. Jaideep’s work has sold at several auctions over the years and is part of important collections.
JAHANGIR JANI is a self-taught artist from Mumbai. He works with sculpture, installation, watercolors and film and is known for his life-size sculptures. Jahangir is concerned with questions around the making of culture. His work has been critically written about by authors and cultural theorists. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in India and abroad, and his works are part of important collections. Jahangir Jani has participated in national and international seminars, been invited to residencies and camps and had a stint as a visiting faculty at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
JYOTEE has a large number of solo and group shows to her credit. She has participated in art residencies in Delhi and Wales, a sculpture symposium in Varanasi and she was part of a 2001 show in Dussledorf where she erected a work of 100 mild steel units with lights inside them. Jyotee created a large site specific, interactive work at the Liverpool Biennial, 2002. She works with a range of materials, varying from pans and pinewood, steel and test tubes, bottles and resin. More recently, she has included text as an element in her work.
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KARTHIK K G is an artist and researcher engaged with changing/moving/shifting phenomena as a reflection of technological abstractions. He seeks out their manifestation in our everyday lives and their iterations as (sci)fictional imaginaries. Karthik’s works take the shape of algorithmic data-visualisations, videos, paper-folds, drawings, games, posters and texts. Karthik did an M.Res in the Curatorial/Knowledge Programme at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He holds an MA in Visual Arts from the Ambedkar University, New Delhi. Earlier, he was a Systems Analyst at Tata Consultancy Services at Chennai, for which he qualified with a BE from Anna University, Madurai.
KHANDAKAR OHIDA a visual artist living in West Bengal, completed her BFA from the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata and MFA from Faculty of Fine Arts, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She works with multiple media – painting, video art, installation art, kinetic art and film. Her major concern is giving a voice to women who cannot be heard, working on subjects such as the monotony of day-to-day life for married women confined to purdah, perceptions regarding relationships, virtue and religious devotion. Ohida’s work has been featured at numerous festivals including Serendipity Art Festival, Goa, 2019; VAICA 1, 201920; Ahang, travelling exhibition in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi (2019).
KATYAYINI GARGI works with multiple media including painting, sculpture, animation, music and sound. She graduated with a BFA in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, followed by a Masters in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London. Since then, Katyayani has received a number of awards and grants including the 2020 Experimenter Generator Co-Operative Art Production Fund; 2017 Shortlist of the Frase Contemporary Art Prize; 2013 Mona Hatoum Scholarship and the 2013 Jeram Patel Award. She has taken part in a number of exhibitions/public performances/ residencies in India and overseas. She lives and works in Delhi.
KHUSHBU PATEL has an interdisciplinary art practice spanning diverse media. She works at various scales, presenting her work in the form of installations (site specific/site responding), photography, performative photography, videos, drawings and performance. She sees time as being a bonding element that integrates her work. The temporal quality of earthly existence and the inevitability of change and decomposition with time awaken her creativity. Currently based in Vadodara, Khushbu graduated from the Surat School of Fine Arts and did her post graduation in Art, Design and Performing Arts from Shiv Nadar University, NOIDA.
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KUNATHARAJU MRUDULA got her Bachelor’s degree in painting from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, and Master’s degree in painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, where she lives and works. Her practice employs painting, video art, performance, drawing, sculpture and printmaking. She engages with themes that relate to stereotypes and myths about women, focussing on the body and subjectivity, cultural taboos, re-framing her lens to include marginalised women. She aims to develop discourse around cultural conditioning, discrimination, and the implications of restrictive standards applied to all women, in the context of a sexist culture.
MANJOT KAUR navigates between drawing, painting, installation, time-based media and performance. She responds to her direct surroundings and examines how nature and humans adapt to changing environments. Using repetition, contradiction, metaphor and symbolism, she aims to create an epistemology of perception and understanding and to draw attention to current socio-political predicaments. Manjot did her BFA and MFA in painting from Govt. College of Art, Chandigarh and now lives in the Netherlands. Currently an artist-inresidence at Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands, Manjot was earlier an artist-in-residence at Unidee, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistolleto, Italy.
KUSH BADHWAR practices across various media and social contexts. Being a believer in the potential of research and collectivity, Kush is interested in collaborative practices and other ecologies, including the life of sounds and images across stretches of time and periods of political change. To this end, he has worked closely with Wala, Word Sound Power, Frontyard Projects and Khanabadosh. At VAICA he will be showing a collaborative work that critically investigates the impact of consumption on natural resources and human bodies in Mumbai, made with the Mohile Parikh Centre.
MANMEET DEVGUN is a Delhi-based performance and lens-based artist. A poet, school teacher and a single mother, she has exhibited her work in numerous group shows across Delhi, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, among other places. Manmeet loves to daydream, dance and live life on her own terms. Her work as a performance artist is closely linked to her own life and life-situations, often foregrounding key feminist concerns. She has performed at several festivals and at universities in India and overseas, the last being The Mother’s Studio, part of Five Million Incidents, 2019-2020.
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MAYA KRISHNA RAO is a theatre artist who creates performances in musical and dance theatre, comedy and cross media. Her themes emerge from contemporary issues and questions around gender. Trained from childhood in Kathakali, she specialises in male roles. She has taught in several institutions, notably National School of Drama and Shiv Nadar University, and has been active in Theatre-inEducation, training teachers and actors in research-based theatre-making for children. A graduate in Sociology from Miranda House, Delhi University, Maya did her Master’s in Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, after which she did a Master’s in Theatre Arts, from Leeds University, UK and a Diploma in Dramain-Education from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
MOONIS AHMAD works in installations, sculpture, programming, sound and video. His interest is in the intersection of contemporary art, philosophical speculation and historical enquiry. Exploring contested ecologies, he raises questions of territoriality and memory. Moonis has exhibited his work at venues in Australia, New Delhi, Switzerland and New Zealand and others. He has participated in various residencies and received the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art's Emerging Artist Award, 2017-18. Moonis teaches at the University of Melbourne and is a recipient of the Australian Graduate Research and Training Programme scholarship. He lives and works between Srinagar and Melbourne.
MONALI MEHER works with her body and emotions as a form of public expression. Her visual language has evolved to include elements like decay, matter and memory; hybridisation and transformation; creation of new identities; belonging and intimacy. Monali graduated in Fine Arts from the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, Mumbai. She has performed and exhibited internationally, receiving invitations, residencies and awards from all over the world. Monali keeps on devising performances as inspiration strikes her. Her public installation The Bridge Is Open at Willem’s Bridge, Amsterdam is on view until 2025.
MURARI JHA is a New Delhi-based visual and performance artist. His multimedia practice explores personal narratives, the psychological processing of everyday socio-political occurrences, the transformation of the body by the environment and the temporal regimes it occupies, and the performativity of objects and spectatorship. What unifies these different fields of enquiry is an abiding interest in studying post-traumatic behaviours and absurd situations. These transformational limits are expressed through the use of industrial materials such as iron, concrete, rubber, sealants and the medium of video. He holds an MFA from B R Ambedkar University, Agra (2012) and BFA from Patna University (2010).
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NEHA CHOKSI embraces a confluence of disciplines, including performance, video, installation, and sculpture. Her work has been exhibited or performed at various museums and galleries. To name few: the Dhaka Art Summit (group, 2020; solo, 2018; group, 2016); 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); Hayward Gallery, London (solo, 2015); Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014); Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California (2013); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (3-person, 2012); Asia Pacific Triennial, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2012); Shanghai Biennale (2012). She lives and works in Los Angeles and Mumbai.
PARUL GUPTA work looks at architectural space as a generator of perceptual experiences. She likes to explore questions of perception, how a particular space informs the way we see. She is also interested in ways in which spatial interventions change our perceptions of individual spaces as well as our own perception of ourselves in that space. Parul’s work on paper takes on similar enquiries about the perception of the inhabited world, integrating geometrical forms, light and movement. After graduating from Nottingham Trent University in 2011, Parul has been showing in galleries and other spaces regularly.
PARASHAR NAIK is an independent filmmaker whose art practice mainly consists of the interpretation of his surroundings. He works as an artist and a curator with drawings, assemblages, kinetic sculpture and videos and has exhibited his works in several countries. He completed his GD Arts from Vasai Vikasini School of Visual Arts. Working as a collaborator with Clark House Initiative, he has contributed to the show Bunting, Guadeloupe Oriental, Home Videos. He also works as a film editor, writer and director on commissioned projects. He edited a series of videos for the Gondwana Series at the Centre Pompidou in 2017.
POOJA IRANNA is a New Delhi-based visual artist. Her art practice comments on the ever expanding urbanism throughout the globe. She worries that as a society we are fast losing our character and our history, depleting our creativity and resources as we seek ‘development’. Pooja uses a variety of mediums to express herself, from delicate drawings to staple pin sculptures, video, photography, and installations. Pooja did both her BFA and MFA in painting from College of Art, New Delhi. Her recent work includes Silently – a proposed plan for rethinking the urban fabric, AICON Gallery, NY 2020; Contemplating the Urban, VASA Centre 2019; The Urban Re-imagined, Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2018. 82
PRABHAKAR PACHPUTE works in an array of mediums and materials including drawing, light, stop motion animation, sound and sculptural forms. Born in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, he lives and works in Pune. Pachpute often creates immersive and dramatic environments in his site-specific works, using portraiture and landscape with surrealist tropes to comment critically on issues of mining labour and the effects of mining on the natural and human landscape. Pachpute received his BFA in sculpture from Indira Kala Sangit University, Khairagarh, Chhattisgarh and his MFA from Maharaja Sayajirao University Vadodara. He has exhibited extensively in solo shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world and in India.
PRANEET SOI was born and schooled in Kolkata. After studies in painting at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, he received an MFA in visual arts at the University of California, San Diego. He was selected for a residency at the Rijkakdademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has lived in the Netherlands since and has been actively involved in projects in India and internationally. Praneet has moved across genres, experimenting with architecture, installation and time-based media. He has worked on a ‘notational methodology’, that allows for the generation of different registers of imagery and subject matter, creating juxtapositions that open the work to being viewed and interpreted.
PRANAY DUTTA travels through ecological, economic and cultural landscapes in his imagination, investigating human-caused dystopias. Interested in the complex relationship between terrestrial species and landscapes, his visual language borrows from science fiction, architecture, gaming worlds and cinema to create surreal topographies and generate other worlds. There is an attempt to evoke a sense of unfamiliarity within the familiar, emphasising the uncanny, and an inclination towards creating possible futures. Pranay has a BVA and MVA in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. He has been a part of various group shows in India and overseas, and was awarded the Inlaks Fine Art Award in 2019 and FICA x MMF Emerging Artist award.
PRANTIK BASU is an alumnus of the Film and Television of India, Pune. A film director and screenwriter, his work engages with the politics of gender and the fragile relationship between nature and humans. His short film Sakhisona won the Tiger Award for Best Short Film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2017 and received screenings and awards at several festivals worldwide. His Palace of Colours premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019. Prantik’s Bela, an hour-long documentary about everyday life in the eponymous village of Bela in West Bengal, was shown at Visions du Réel in Nyon in 2021 and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2021.
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PRATUL DASH was born in Burla, Sambalpur, Orissa. He works across multiple media including, video, performance, photographic, earth art, installation and sculpture. After his Bachelor’s degree from the B K College of Arts and Crafts, Bhubaneswar, and his Master’s in painting from the College of Art, New Delhi. Pratul has held numerous solos and group shows by noted curators. A recipient of the Inlaks Foundation Award, he has also participated in a number of residency programmes. Pratul is widely acknowledged for raising awareness about environmental issues. He is concerned about the living conditions of migrant laborers in Indian cities and the encroachment of the expanding cities on the surrounding green eco-systems.
RANJINI KRISHNAN holds a PhD in cultural studies from the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bengaluru. Her writing, research and other interventions explore the connections between concepts and expressions in creative arts. Producer and script-writer of the award-winning documentary A Pestering Journey (2010), she is also the co-script writer of feature film, Kanyaka Talkies (2013) which received the Best Screenplay prize at the New York Indian Film Festival. Ranjini cocurated a four-day thinking summit entitled Kala Shareeram Chintha (Art, Body, Thinking) as part of Kochi Biennale 2016.
RANBIR KALEKA grew up in Patiala, Punjab. After his studies at the College of Art in Chandigarh, he received a Master’s Degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. Ranbir Kaleka’s work reflects a view of the world that appears to place reliance on the juxtaposition of improbabilities. His movement into video art is part of his explorations of the ‘psychological event’, which takes place outside the physical painting, through the use of light to create the image. Kaleka has also created and exhibited constructed photographs, sculptures and installations. His work has been honored with awards, exhibited around the world and collected by museums and private collectors in India and abroad.
ROHAN CHAVAN is a Mumbai based scenographer in the events industry. He says “I have no formal training in any school of thought. Being a dropout from engineering, I knew that I was interested in building things.” Rohan says he feels good about this lacuna because “I have been inquisitive and am learning from music, films, photography and art, and I am not bound to any institutional framework.” He says he has been influenced by films since childhood. Lockdown provided the opportunity to create some video sketches to respond to the prevailing political atmosphere. Rohan says he is interested in experimental films and being new to it, he is focussing on learning. 84
SABA HASAN is a noted contemporary artist with a multimedia art practice. Best known for the conceptual and lyrical strength of her works, perhaps stemming from her formal training in anthropology, Saba’s practice is further informed by cultural and social perspectives. Her conversationbased video La Verite / Haqeeqat / Truth was a finalist for the Celeste Contemporary Art Prize, Milan, 2014. Saba’s works have been exhibited at major venues like the 55th International Venice Biennale; the National Gallery of Art, Colombo; the Hohenburg Castle, Salzburg; the Chelsea Film Festival, New York; the Bali International Film Festival and the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, Trivandrum.
SAJID WAJID SHAIKH is a visual artist whose practice is centred on the conjunction of the conscious and the subconscious mind. His drawings transcend space, time, and memory to question various givens. He creates a world of anomalies, seemingly fictitive and surreal. The artist also explores conceptual art by recontextualising everyday objects, to challenge their form and function. Sajid works through drawing, photography, videos, sculptural installations, and performance-based pieces.
SABYASACHI BHATTACHARJEE calls himself an image maker and a storyteller. Born in Tripura, he acquired his BVA from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Agartala. He then moved to Vadodara for his Masters in Visual Art from Maharaja Sayajirao University. He finds himself documenting the chaos in his surroundings, looking for patterns to make sense of them. He uses digital animation to create spatial narratives that play with time and space. He also likes to draw on scientific theories to formulate socio-political or philosophical arguments, such as the idea of cacophony in a social context. Sabyasachi lives in Vadodara, often collaborating on projects with an independent film crew and a theatre company.
KARTIK MISHRA is an avant-garde/experimental film maker, painter, sculptor and musician, whose works often revolve around the theme of religion and the human condition. An advertising film maker by profession, some of his latest works include: an experimental short called Scenes From the Memoirs of a Socialist Hermaphrodite is currently running in the international festival circuit and it recently premiered at the Veudemic Film Festival. Under his musical moniker Colorblind, he has released 3 EPs and 2 LPs, including the critically acclaimed noise/experimental rock record Post Modern Holocaust.
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SANDEEP T K is a lens-based artist from Thalassery, Kerala, practicing and living in Bengaluru. His practice involves documentary photography, moving images and text. He works with the idea of space, belonging and complex human relationships through personal experience, memory and exploration of his identity and surroundings. He received the Inlaks Fine Art Award in 2020.
SHEBA CHHACHHI is an installation artist and photographer who investigates questions of gender, eco-philosophy, violence and visual cultures. An activist who documented the women’s movement in the 1980s, Chhachhi moved on to create intimate, sensorial encounters through large multimedia installations. Her work seeks to bring the contemplative into the political. She has exhibited widely at important art events internationally and her works are held in significant public and private collections, including Tate Modern, UK; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi; Bose Pacia, New York; Singapore Art Museum; Devi Art Foundation, Delhi; National Gallery of Modern Art, India. Chhachhi speaks, writes and teaches in both institutional and non-formal contexts.
SANKRITI CHATTOPADHYAY is an alumna of the Film and Television of India, Pune, trained in Direction and Screenplay Writing. Interested in building an art practice with a conceptual rigour, her first degree was an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. A participant of research programmes at Film University Babelsberg, Germany and WITS University Film and Television, Johannesburg, South Africa, she has received grants from the India Foundation for the Arts and Kolkata Creativity Centre. Her documentary Reality without a Name has been shown in the 12th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala and other festival venues.
SHREYA MENON describes herself as an animation filmmaker and visual artist. After completing her BA from Jai Hind College in Mumbai, she pursued studies in Animation and Motion Graphics from Unitedworld Institute of Design, Karnavati University, Ahmedabad. She says that she feels compelled to tell stories and to strike up conversations with people from different backgrounds and to collaborate with them. She thinks she is drawn to people that seem interesting from afar, but up close, their stories sometimes turn out to be frightening. She hopes to make documentary films, incorporating animation as a form of expression that can bridge facts and emotions meaningfully. 86
SOGHRA KHURASANI is a visual artist with a postgraduate degree in printmaking from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. Her undergraduate studies were in painting, from Andhra University, Vishakhapatnam. Her recent solo shows include: SKIN, Gitler & __, New York 2018; Cratered Fiction curated by Sumesh Sharma,TARQ, Mumbai, 2015; To Speak for the Mute, Gitler & __ New York, 2015; Reclaiming Voices, curated by Noman Ammouri at Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad 2014; One day it will come out curated by Sumesh Sharma and Hena Kapadia at TARQ Gallery, 2014, Mumbai. Soghra received the National Academy Award of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi in 2016.
SUKANYA GHOSH works across painting, photography, animation and the moving image. After a degree in painting at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, Sukanya studied animation at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She has shown her work at venues including the Lianzhou Museum of Photography, Qingyuan, China; Jimei x Arles Festival, Xiamen, China; Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa and the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. She received the Charles Wallace India Trust Award; the Sarai Independent Fellowship and several other awards. Sukanya has managed the arts programmes at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Kolkata and has extensive graphic design experience. She lives and works between Delhi and Kolkata.
SOHRAB HURA has a professional core in photography, and he often extends his practice into film, text and sound. In 2010 he made Pati, a short film about a village of the same name in Madhya Pradesh. He assembled photographs, sounds, video footage as well as text and voiceover to give a sense of daily life there. Continuing his experiments with this 'half-moving' form that draws from still images, he made The Lost Head & the Bird (2017), Bittersweet (2019), both of which are showing in VAICA and The Coast (2020). Sohrab Hura has also published five volumes under his imprint, UGLY DOG.
SUMAKSHI SINGH is an artist and an educator who has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC); Oxford University, UK; MASSart Boston; College of Art, Delhi; Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, UK. She curated Deeper within its Silence – Form and Unbecoming for the Devi Art Foundation, Delhi, currently ongoing. Her installations, animations, paintings, threadwork and sculptures have been exhibited at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi; Saatchi Gallery London; Kochi Biennale; Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago among other museums and galleries.
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SUNIL PADWAL uses urban landscapes and everyday objects to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer. Interested in observation and memory, Sunil explores the rich intersections between two-dimensional drawing and three-dimensional found objects, personal belongings and documents. His formal education was in Fine Arts followed by a degree in Applied Art, both at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, Mumbai. Solo exhibitions include: 2019: Lining an archive, GALLERYSKE, New Delhi; 2014: Confluxes, The Arts House, Singapore; 2012: Soliloquies, notes from the drawing book, presented by Veranda at Space 1857, Chicago; 2008: Myopia, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. Sunil was born in Mumbai and continues to live there.
SUREKHA has explored artistic forms through installations, video works and photography, as an artist and curator. Her works investigate how visuality can engage with gender/ecology/ aesthetics, and the socio-political aspects of public and private spaces. Her work has been shown in venues around the world including Ocean Flower Island Museum, Hainan, China; Museum Guimet, Paris; Ecole Beaux Arts, Paris; Royal Academy of Art, London; New Media Festival, Dhaka; Alhamra Art Council, Lahore and Karachi and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai. Surekha has participated in international art residencies and has been involved in visual art collectives like BAR1 and was a founder curator of Rangoli Metro Art Center, Bengaluru.
SURABHI SHARMA is a filmmaker based in Abu Dhabi and Mumbai. An alumna of the Film and Television of India, Pune, trained in Direction and Screenplay Writing, she has worked on several feature length documentaries, apart from some short fiction films and video installations. Cinema verite and ethnography are the genres that inform her filmmaking. Her key concern has been documenting cities in transition through the lens of labour, music and migration, and most recently reproductive labour. She is currently teaching in the Film and New Media Programme at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
SURESH B V is caught up in questions of realism and representation, producing a body of work that continuously negotiates the visual fields of the contemporary world. His work draws on multiple realisms, raising questions of history and narration. He employs combinations of videos, paintings, installations, digital prints and mass media images. Suresh was initially trained at the Ken School of Arts, Bengaluru and later studied at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara and the Royal College of Art, London. He currently heads the Fine Arts Department at the Sarojini Naidu School, University of Hyderabad. Suresh enjoys engaging in collaborative projects with authors of children’s books and theatre persons. 88
SWAGATA BHATTACHARYYA visual artist, lives and works in Kolkata. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, he moved to Vadodara to do a Master of Visual Arts in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University. Through his practice, his works give visibility to the speculative narratives of existing power structures and the multifaceted ways these shape our world. His enquiry lies in how modes of power shape policies and his visualisations speculate on the construction of future environments, through architecture, urban design and artificially manufactured landscapes. He works with drawing, photographs and CGI to create simulated worlds.
TUSHAR WAGHELA is a filmmaker and visual artist with a Master’s degree in Indian Philosophy. He has been working in the field of contemporary art and experimental cinema for 25 years. His video arts, installations, short films and experimental cinemas have been shown in museums, galleries, universities and in over 150 international film festivals. These include the Cannes Film Festival, London Asian Film Festival, British Film Institute, the Collectif Jeune Cinema Paris, Mumbai Film Festival, and many more. Tushar lives and works from his studio in Chhattisgarh. He is currently working on a Pop Art series called Without Ticket using street art, spray painting and mixed media techniques.
TALLUR L N works with sculpture, wall pieces, interactive work and site-specific installations, to expose the absurdities of everyday life and the characteristic anxieties of contemporary society. Living between Bengaluru and Seoul, Tallur correlates the traditional and contemporary, incorporating craft objects and found materials in his work. His sculptures and installations have been widely exhibited internationally. He was awarded the Skoda Prize in 2012 and his work was featured at the first edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2012. Tallur received a BFA in Painting from Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts, an MFA in Museology from Maharaja Sayyajirao University, and an MA in Contemporary Fine Art Practice from Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.
USHNISH MUKHOPADHYAY lives and works in Kolkata and Vadodara. After his BFA in painting from Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata, and MFA in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayyajirao University, Vadodara, Ushnish’s work has shown in a number of group exhibitions. These include Svikriti at Birla Academy, Kolkata; Ars Moriendi online exhibition; Borderless Lockdown, online exhibition; Artpro International Video Art Festival at National Art Gallery, Dhaka all in 2020. Ushnish’s awards include the 2020 Sarala-Basant Kumar Birla Award from Birla Academy, Kolkata; Nasreen Mohamedi Scholarship in 2019-2018; Ministry of Culture, Government of India, Scholarship to Young Artists, 2016-2017.
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VEER MUNSHI was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, growing to adulthood there. After graduating from Kashmir University, he did a Master’s in Fine Art at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. Veer considers himself to be a displaced person, banished from his cherished homeland, Kashmir. His work seeks to highlight the constant turmoil within that comes from being dislocated from home and his images encourage viewers to reflect on forced migrations. Veer has shown solo in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Kochi, Perth, Edinburgh and Geneva with installations, videos, paintings and photographs. He has participated in important group shows and has been honoured with several public awards and fellowships from the Government of India.
VISHAL KUMARASWAMY practices as an artist and filmmaker. He received a Master’s degree in photography from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, London. Based in Bengaluru, Vishal has shown his works at major exhibitions including the Venice Biennale’s Research Pavilion; Athens Digital Arts Festival; Apex Art’s Saavdhaan – Regimes of Truth at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, USA. In 2020, Vishal was awarded the main commission by the Royal College of Art and Furtherfield in London for his Empathy Loading (www. empathyloading.com). He has been an artist in residence with several institutions and is currently a virtual resident at SAVAC’s ADA-DADA Residency Program in Toronto.
VIBHA GALHOTRA lives and works in Delhi. She has been concerned with the consequences of human activity on the environment. Known for her largescale sculptural installations, Vibha's practice ranges across photography, film, video, found objects, performative objects, sculpture, installation, text, sound, drawing and public interventions. Vibha has shown extensively in India and internationally, with several projects involving local communities and their sites, leading to a range of site-specific works. Vibha’s formal studies were in graphics at the Government College of Art, Chandigarh, and at Kala Bhavan, Visva-Bharati University. She is the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards including the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship and the Rockefeller Grant. 90
CURATORS BHARATI KAPADIA is an artist, graphic designer, art consultant and performer. She has been engaged with the visual arts in various capacities for over four decades. As an artist, she has shown widely in India and at international venues in New York, Boston, Vienna, Munich, Istanbul and has participated in residencies in India, US and Spain. As graphic designer she has designed books, catalogues, posters, executed turnkey exhibition projects and been an art consultant for several Indian art collectors. Her performance and video work have been shown at festivals in India and abroad. She has curated art exhibitions and served on several art related platforms.
ANUJ DAGA is an architect, writer and curator based in Mumbai. His practice is informed by diverse engagements in fields of design, research and academia that have resulted in numerous roles as writer, critic, commentator, theorist or interlocutor in the cultural field. Anuj has worked with several cultural institutions including Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, MoMA - New York, CAMP - Mumbai, Godrej Innovation Centre and Serendipity Arts Foundation in various capacities. He has keen interest in studying the processes of visual culture and meaning-making in the contemporary built environment in South Asia. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the School of Environment & Architecture, Mumbai.
CHANDITA MUKHERJEE is a documentary film maker and has extensively explored the links between science, technology and society through her work. Chandita leads the activities of Comet Media Foundation, a Mumbai-based organisation whose projects make factual knowledge and concepts accessible to children and young adults. She has closely explored a range of knowledge systems, produced films, brought out publications, organised learning festivals and offered training programmes. Winning national and international recognition for her work, her awards include the Jules Verne prize for science communication, the Ravi J Matthai Fellowship for Social Communication and National Awards from the Govt of India for short films in fiction and non-fiction genres.
ADVISOR / TINA NAGPAUL is a writer and film producer with a passion for film, literature, art, design and technology. With over 16 years of experience in the Indian film industry, she is now exploring new ideas, mediums and formats to express herself creatively. Currently working on a documentary feature, she is also developing content for digital platforms. Tina has a Bachelor's degree in Physics and Astronomy from Mount Holyoke College, a Masters in Public Policy from Georgia Tech and a Certificate in Filmmaking from New York University.
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PANELISTS TASNEEM ZAKARIA MEHTA is an art historian, writer, curator, designer, and cultural activist. A leader of India’s heritage preservation movement, Mehta has successfully pioneered the revival and restoration of several of Mumbai’s important cultural sites. As managing trustee and honorary director of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mehta conceptualised, curated, designed, and implemented the institution’s restoration and revitalisation. In 2005 the museum was awarded a UNESCO AsiaPacific Heritage Award of Excellence and has become an important cultural hub and platform for showcasing contemporary and historic exhibitions.
PAROMITA VOHRA is a filmmaker and whose work explores feminism, love and desire, urban life and popular culture. Her work has been broadcast and is taught internationally and exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Tate Modern and The Wellcome Trust. She is the founder and Creative Director of Agents of Ishq, a website noted for open discussions about desire, love and sex. AoI’s exuberant and playful videos on everything from consent to masturbation to mental sexual health, have created a new language in India for talking about sexuality, in a pleasure positive and intersectional way, drawing on popular culture and the power of art to counter narratives of sexual violence and danger.
NAJRIN ISLAM a researcher, writer and performer, was awarded the first Art Writers’ Award (2018-19) by TAKE on art magazine and Swiss-Arts Council Pro Helvetia, following which, she published her first monograph titled Archive as Medium: Exploring the Performative Body. She has been associated with various platforms as a writer, including ASAP|art, an editorially-driven archive on lens-based cultures in South Asia. Najrin’s research interest is situated at the intersection of moving image histories, archival politics and institutional omissions. She completed her M.A. in Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
AKANSHA RASTOGI is senior curator of exhibitions and programming at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi. She has served as associate curator of India Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and participated in many curatorial residencies and visitorship programs. Her research focuses on exhibition histories of modern and contemporary Indian art, institutional memory and histories, museum studies and storytelling. She is obsessed with her ideas around grazing, passersby, youthfulness as a place and folklore as lifehack, language and future-speech.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM SAROVER ZAIDI is a philosopher and a social anthropologist who works at the intersections of critical theory, anthropology, art, architecture and material culture studies. She has worked extensively on religious iconography and modernist architecture in South Asia, on urbanism in the city of Mumbai and currently co-runs a site on writing the city called Chiragh Dilli (https://chiraghdilli). She has received the Max Planck fellowship, the INTACH fellowship, the IFA fellowship and the Khoj fellowship for her research interests. She also curates Elementary forms, an interdisciplinary forum on art, architecture and anthropology. Sarover currently teaches at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Sonipat, Haryana.
KRISHNA MEHTA managed social media for VAICA2. In the past she has worked for cultural projects like the Mumbai Litfest and Kommune India (a spoken word performance forum). Artistic enterprises such as these give her an appreciation of the relationships holding together history, culture, economics, and give her perspectives on the future. She loves to travel and to blog about her encounters. Storytelling and writing come from an old tradition of letter writing in her family. She can speak, read and write basic French, Mandarin and Spanish. Currently Krishna is studying SaaS (Software as a Service) networks, one of the main categories of cloud computing, and honing her woodworking skills.
KRITTIKA BHATTACHARJEE, graphics and social media designer for VAICA2, is an architect with a wide interest in visual arts, conceptual art, teaching, architecture, urbanism and research. After qualifying from the Faculty of Architecture, Manipal University, she has been practicing graphic design, mixed media art and is working as an art teacher. Exploring the multidisciplinary aspects of art and design, she has worked with projects such as The People Place Project, LUMA World, Saturday Art Class, and others. She has illustrated the books People Called Ahmedabad, Love Under Construction and various educational tools used for gamified learning with LUMA world. Krittika hopes to pursue further studies and to work on projects in housing, policy-making and urban design, in future. 93
PRESENTERS
SPONSORS
DR. BHAU DAJI LAD MUMBAI CITY MUSEUM This institution is Mumbai’s oldest museum. It opened in 1857 as the Victoria and Albert Museum, showcasing the city’s art and culture. Over the years it developed a rare collection of fine and decorative arts that highlight early modern art practices as well as the craftsmanship of various communities of the Bombay Presidency. After several years of neglect, the Museum building and collections underwent a comprehensive, UNESCO-Award winning restoration from 2003 to 2008, spearheaded by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), with the leadership of Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, supported by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. The Museum re-opened in 2008 with a strong focus on contemporary art and culture through its exhibition and outreach programmes. It has exhibited contemporary creative practices in design, crafts and textiles, architecture and urbanism, as well as film and video art, often collaborating with international museums and institutions to bring traditional and contemporary practices to the people of Mumbai.
BAJAJ TRUSTS For several decades now, the Bajaj group has been contributing, directly or indirectly to various programmes in rural economic development, which include the application of science and technology for betterment of rural livelihoods, formal and non-formal education, healthcare and community welfare, development of women and children. The Trusts also support arts, culture, heritage and sports activities. They also honour and award persons who have aligned their efforts to community development based on Gandhian values. JAMNALAL BAJAJ FOUNDATION This organisation is named after the late Jamnalal Bajaj, founder of the Bajaj Group. A visionary and philanthropist, and one of the patriarchs of the freedom struggle, he was popularly known as the fifth son of Mahatma Gandhi. He espoused the trusteeship concept of management and oriented his business enterprises to serve society.
COMET MEDIA FOUNDATION Comet Media Foundation is an acronym of the expression Centre of Open Media for Education and Transformation. Founded in 1992, it works towards fostering education, social change and sustainability. Towards this end, the organisation undertakes activities that build curiosity, invite questions and open out discussions through innovative cultural experiments.
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INDEX
Aakash Dubey 56, 57, 71 Abeer Khan 56, 57, 57, 71 Abhishek Hazra 18, 19, 30, 31, 71 Aditi Kulkarni 05, 30, 31, 56, 58, 71 Akansha Rastogi 13, 92 Amitesh Grover 13, 56, 58, 72 Amol Patil 18, 19, 56, 58, 72 Amshu Chukki 30, 31, 72 Anjana Kothamachu 30, 32, 44, 45, 73 Ankit Ravani 18, 19, 73 Ankur Yadav 44, 45, 73 Anuj Daga 08, 91 Anuradha Rudrapriya 05, 30, 32, 44, 45, 73 Archana Hande 44, 46, 74 Ashok Meena 44, 46, 56, 59, 74 Ayan Biswas 30, 32, 74 Ayisha Abraham 30, 33, 33, 33, 33, 74 Babu Eshwar Prasad 05, 13, 56, 59, 75 Baiju Parthan 18, 20, 75 Bajaj Trusts 00, 01, 05, 94, Bharati Kapadia 08, 13, 18, 20, 30, 34, 75, 91 Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum 00, 01, 05, 13, 94 Biswajit Das 44, 46, 75 C Chaithanya 44, 47, 76 Chandita Mukherjee 04, 08, 13, 91 95
Chinmoyi Patel 56, 59, 76 Comet Media Foundation 00, 01, 91, 94 Devadeep Gupta 44, 47, 47, 76 Dharmendra Prasad 44, 48, 76 Gaura Singh 30, 34, 77 Gayatri Kodikal 30, 34, 77 Gigi Scaria 13, 18, 20, 56, 60, 77 Hansa Thapliyal 13, 18, 21, 21, 77 Hetal Chudasama 05, 44, 48, 78 Jahangir Jani 56, 60, 78 Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation 00, 94 Jaideep Mehrotra, 56, 61, 78 Jyotee 18, 21, 78 Karthik K G 06, 44, 48, 79 Kartik Mishra 24, 85 Katyayani Gargi 56, 61,62, 79 Khandakar Ohida 06, 30, 35, 35, 79 Khushbu Patel 30, 35, 79 Kunatharaju Mrudula 30, 36, 36, 36, 36, 37, 80 Kush Badhwar 56, 62, 62, 80 Manjot Kaur 18, 22, 22, 80 Manmeet Devgun 30, 37, 80 Maya Krishna Rao 05, 30, 37, 81 Monali Meher 30, 38, 81 Moonis Ahmad 13, 30, 38, 56, 63, 81 Murari Jha 30, 38, 81
Najrin Islam 13, 92 Neha Choksi 18, 22, 82 Parashar Naik 30, 39, 82 Paromita Vohra 13, 92 Parul Gupta 18, 23, 82 Payal Arya 05, 30, 31, 71, 72 Pooja Iranna 44, 49, 56, 63, 82 Prabhakar Pachpute 44, 49, 49, 83 Pranay Datta 13, 44, 50, 83 Praneet Soi 18, 23, 83 Prantik Basu 44, 50, 83 Pratul Dash 44, 50, 84 Ranbir Kaleka 13, 44, 51, 84 Ranjini Krishnan 06, 18, 23, 84 Rohan Chavan 44, 51, 84 Saba Hasan 05, 18, 24, 44, 52, 85 Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee 06, 56, 63, 64, 64, 85 Sajid Wajid Shaikh 18, 24, 24, 30, 39, 85 Sandeep T K 30, 39, 86 Sankriti Chattopadhyay 06, 18, 25, 86 Sarover Zaidi 13, 93 Sheba Chhachhi 13, 56, 64, 86 Shreya Menon 30, 40, 44, 52, 86 Soghra Khurasani 30, 40, 42, 56, 65, 87 Sohrab Hura 18, 25, 30, 40, 87 Sukanya Ghosh 13, 18, 26, 30, 41, 56, 65, 87
Sumakshi Singh 15,18, 26, 87 Sunil Padwal 18, 27, 27, 27, 88 Surabhi Sharma 56, 65, 66, 88 Surekha 44, 53, 88 Suresh B V 06, 56, 67, 88 Swagata Bhattacharyya 06, 56, 66, 89 Tallur L N 13, 41, 89 Tasneem Zakaria Mehta 05, 08, 92, 94 Tina Nagpaul 13, 91 Tushar Waghela 02, 06, 44, 53, 53, 56, 67, 68, 89 Ushnish Mukhopadhyay 18, 28, 56, 67, 89 Veer Munshi 05, 44, 54, 54, 90 Vibha Galhotra 44, 54, 90 Vishal Kumaraswamy 06, 18, 28, 69, 90
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