[Reader-list] Dec 19/Kolkata: Raqs Media Collective (Shuddhabrata Sengupta), Bani Abidi, Naeem Mohaiemen

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

If you are in Kolkata, please do join this conversation and audience
discussion. - Naeem
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EXPERIMENTER presents

Artist Conversation: Raqs Media Collective (represented by
Shuddhabrata Sengupta), Bani Abidi, Naeem Mohaiemen

Dec 19th, 6pm
Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata
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“Often, when asked an uncomfortable question, or faced with an
unsettling reality, the rattled respondent ducks and dives with a
stammer, a mumble, a sweat, a scrawl, or a nervous tic. The respondent
may not be lying, but neither may he be interested in offering a
captive legible truth either to the interrogator or to his
circumstances.”
[Raqs Media Collective, E-flux journal]

Shuddha, Bani and Naeem discuss issues of form, impact, and
measurability that influence their own art practices: the turn to
documentary forms in visual arts, the clash between evolving new
mediums and earlier forms, the question of impact vs. the liminal
spaces of immeasurability. Public interventionists in the visual arts
deal with political issues with varying degrees of impact and
friction. Artists can take public positions in expected forms (the
letter to the editor, the petition, the essay, the interview) and this
ruffles few feathers. But when the political concerns are fused
through the work within the gallery walls, but yet operate within
modes of illegibility, the audience can have varied and unexpected
responses. This has also led to debates about the problem of use-value
within work, and the necessity (or not) of separating activist work
from art practice (for example in conversation between Martha Rosler &
Paul Chan in DAP’s “Between Artists” series).


This conversation is hosted by Experimenter, in the context of their
current show “Freedom of Notional”, which features Shilpa Gupta, Bani
Abidi, Naeem Mohaiemen.

http://www.experimenter.in/freedom/1.html
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/inventing-freedom/546882/0

BIOGRAPHIES
--------------------------

SHUDDHABRATA SENGUPTA is a media practitioner, filmmaker and writer
with the Raqs Media Collective, and one of the initiators of Sarai.
His recent work involves textual explorations of aesthetics,
surveillance and cyberculture. His essays have been published in
various venues, including '13 Decemeber- A Reader: The Strange Case Of
The Attack On the Indian Parliament'. Along with Jeebesh Bagchi and
Monica Narula, he is a member of Raqs which has presented work at most
of the major international shows, from Documenta to the Venice
Biennale. Raqs were co-curators of Manifesta 7, The European Biennial
of Contemporary Art. Based in Delhi since its foundation, Raqs Media
Collective nonetheless has a complex relationship to location. The
city of Delhi is very often the subject of their work, and in their
engagement with modernity they often display a lived relationship with
myths and histories from South Asia and its wider region. They are,
however, resistant to the label "Indian" since, they argue, it
represents an abstraction so enormous that it can explain nothing
about them, and prefer to talk about themselves simply as "from
Delhi". [raqsmediacollective.net]

BANI ABIDI was born in Karachi. She received her BFA from the National
College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and an MFA from the School of Art
Institute of Chicago, USA. Working primarily in video, Abidi seeks to
address issues of national and cultural identity in relation to the
history of Pakistan and India's partition as well as the broad impact
of American culture and power in a global context. Her group
exhibitions include: 7th Gwangju Biennale; Thermocline of Art - New
Asian Waves, ZKM, Karlsruhe,Germany; Singapore Biennale;
Sub-Contingent- The South Asian Sub Continent in Contemporary Art,
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo;Contemporary Commonwealth, National
Gallery of Victoria, Australia; 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale; ‘A
Place Called Home’ - Group Show, National South African Gallery. Solo
shows include: Gallery Ske - Bangalore; Green Cardamom- London; TPW
Gallery- Toronto, Haines Gallery,San Fransisc, V.M Art Gallery. Recent
acquistions of her work include Museum of Modern Art, New York;
Patricia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo,Turin; Marguelies Collection, Miami;
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and Devi Art Foundation. [baniabidi.com]

NAEEM MOHAIEMEN is a writer and artist working in Dhaka and New York.
He uses photo, video, and archives to explore histories of the
international left, utopia/dystopia slippage, post-partition South
Asia, and globally interlinked security panic. His work has shown at
Finnish Museum of Photography, Scope Basel, Frieze Art Fair, Dubai
Third Line, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, etc. Working between two
countries, Naeem sometimes explores the contradiction of Bengalis in
marginal migrant status, and majoritarian (and authoritarian) roles in
their own country. He writes on Bangladesh’s religious and ethnic
minorities for the Ain Salish Kendro Annual Human Rights report
(askbd.org), and on activist blogs (unheardvoice.net/blog). As part of
this work, “Muslims or Heretics: My Camera Can Lie” was screened in a
side-session of UK House of Lords. His essays include Islamic Roots of
Hip-Hop (Sound Unbound, MIT Press), Beirut: Illusion of a Silver
Porsche (Men of Global South, Zed Books), Why Mahmud Can't be a Pilot
(Nobody Passes, Seal Press), Adman Blues Become Artist Liberation
(Indian Highway, Serpentine Gallery), Everybody Wants To Be Singapore
(La Buena Vida, Carlos Motta, ICA), and the book Collectives in
Atomised Time (with Doug Ashford, Idensitat, Spain). [shobak.org]


2/1 Hindusthan Road, Kolkata – 29
(under Gariahat flyover, next to Kanishka’s sari store)
+91 (33) 4001 2289 / 2463 0465
prateek at experimenter.in
http://www.experimenter.in