[Reader-list] [Announcements] 'A dying man sings of that which felled him'

[Monica Narula]

'A dying man sings of that which felled him'
Raqs Media Collective
"Subcontingent: The South Asian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art" at  
the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Torino/Turin)
Curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Francesco Monacorda.
Opening : 29th of June, 2006.

“A dying man sings of that which felled him” presents its visitors  
with a silent song of a thousand words, a bier of iron rods for the  
repose of a fallen man, a setting sun, and an empty chair awaiting a  
visitor.

Here, in this long twilight, a story from the Bhishma Canto of the  
Mahabharata - replayed as if on a remote camera, realized with  
construction materials - is configured to form a meditation on  
contemporary capitalism.The list of a thousand words (reminiscent of  
Bhishma's death-bed incantation of the thousand names of Vishnu) may  
be thought of as a 'dying declaration', or as an eulogy chanted by a  
dying man to the power that felled him. The installation involves us  
all as witnesses to this terminal state.

At a time when the rhetoric of impending ‘super-powerdom’ resounds in  
the metropolises of South Asia with an exhausting monotony, this  
installation is a reminder of the whimsical contingencies of the  
operation of power which spare no one, not even those who imagine  
themselves at the helm of affairs. The iron rods  -  a notational  
trope that recalls both the buillding and destruction of cities as  
well as Bhishma's death-bed of arrows made by Arjun during the  
Mahabharata battle - act as a reminder of the fragility and  
tenuousness of our hold on the world. The visitor is invited to  
contemplate their own recorded image within the matrix of this  
installation, and to reflect on the caveats that this work offers to  
the discourse of triumph that surrounds us today.

Acknowledgements: Rana Dasgupta, Mrityunjoy Chatterjee,
Video Image : Mansour Aziz
Video Editing: Iram Ghufran

In addition to this installation we are contributing to this  
exhibition as crtitical interlocutors to the curatorial framework  
with a text for the catalogue - 'Once Again, to the Distant Observer'  
- and with textual interventions within the space of the exhibition.

'Subcontingent', according to curators Ilaria Bonacossa and Francesco  
Monacorda, is an exhibition of contemporary art "revolving around an  
'open notion' of the South Asian Subcontinent - not as a map of  
nation states often riven by conflict, but as a complex matrix of  
people, ideas, cultures, languages, ways of living, faiths and  
histories...The title of the exhibition envisages an imaginary  
utopian space, one able to contain all the different aspects of the  
subcontinent without reducing it to one single identity."

For details about the exhibition and other participating artists, see  
the website of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo <http:// 
www.fondsrr.org>

The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is at :
Via Modane, 16 10141 Torino/Turin : Phone +39 011 3797600
The exhibition opens on the 29th of June, 2006 and will stay on view  
till the 8th of October 2006.

Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net


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