[Reader-list] Open Day: City as Studio: EXB 10.02

[Iram Ghufran]

Dear all

City as Studio: EXB 10.01 has gradually evolved into City as Studio: EXB 
10.02. We are ready to receive an outside public now.
Please join us on the first Open Day on Thursady, the 15th of April.

Exhibition Details:

Opening: April 15, 2010
Venue: Sarai CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi (near the Civil Lines metro 
station)
Time: 6 pm

Artists: Shamsher Ali, Gaigongmei Gangmei, Goutam Ghosh, Iram Ghufran,
Kriti Gupta, Alana Hunt, Amitabh Kumar, Niha Masih, Suraj Rai

Realised by Iram Ghufran, Amitabh Kumar
Produced at Sarai Media Lab, Sarai- CSDS, Delhi
April 2010

Exhibition Timings:
Monday to Friday from April 16 to May 10, 2010

Hoping to see you there.

Warmly
Iram

============
Details of works
=============

I] Shamsher Ali, Suraj Rai

Work title: SO THAT AFFECTION FOR THE CITY ENDURES (Ver 1.2)
Material: Circuit boards (Mother boards, Switches, Computer Cards, Key 
Boards, LAN cards, RAMs, SMPS), CPU fans, wires, speakers, microphone, 
adapters, props, lights.
Year: 2010

Brief statement on the work: It's almost impossible to remove parts from 
a functioning electronic system, though the possibilities of going on 
adding to the system to make it grow remain infinite. That's also how a 
city builds itself – through constant additions, replacements, 
replenishments. There is no point of origin, or centre, or unit through 
the repetition of which it has been built. Each part is a cosmos in 
itself, perfect, but the activation of each part happens through its 
alignment, and continuous realignment, with all the rest. A fragile 
built form of life gets accretively constituted. This is the city 
thinking. It is in a storm, and post-storm, together. It requires the 
force of our look so as to accelerate.

II] Gaigongmei Gangmei, Kriti Gupta, Niha Masih

Work title: THOUSANDS OF WORDS
Material: Digital print on photo paper
Date: 2009- 2010


Brief statement on the work: Etching a city through photographs becomes 
a part of the process of collecting memories. The city as a ferris 
wheel, constantly in motion, all lit up. The city as a work in progress, 
endlessly constructing and deconstructing itself. The city as a 
superstructure of concrete and love notes…

Each photograph in itself is a word carrying many meanings. Putting 
together images in diverse patterns and sequences, is both challenging 
as well as exciting. It offers the space to create – add layers, 
subtract meaning and generate multiple ways of looking at the city.

A photograph speaks a thousand words. When you put together hundreds of 
photographs, each speaking a thousand words, what happens?

Engagement with images has limitless possibilities. We invite you to go 
beyond the visual limits as an audience. Look at the images, our 
stories, touch the photographs, stick notes on them, even take some 
away, but do leave some in return :)

Additional photographs by:
Carole Dieterich
Coline Garre
Ektaa Malik
Shariq Naqvi
Gaurav
Parikishit Singhal

III] Goutam Ghosh

Work title: PINK MOUNTAIN
Material: Face massage cream, vaseline petroleum jelly, transparent 
thread, black plastic sheet, transparent pipe, nylon cosmetic hair, 
soot, shaving foam, drip syringe and drainage pipe.
Year: 2010

IV] Iram Ghufran, Amitabh Kumar

Work title: PLUSH AS DUST
Material: Dust, plastic zip locked packets, specimen tray
Year: 2010

Brief statement on the work: Dust settles. Treating the entire city with 
an honest equanimity. It covers everything. Thin and thick layers of 
dust, tiny and large particles, fragile but stubborn, marking time, 
witness to the experiences of space. Dust carries with it stories and 
anecdotes, traces and patterns, rumours and reports.

We have been scraping dust off objects and surfaces of built forms 
across the city. This act of gathering has created a practice of 
collecting, labeling, accumulating, cataloguing and mapping. Our 
collection of dust samples has only just begun, our questions to dust 
have yet to be articulated.

The anatomy of dust carries the history of ourselves and the city we 
inhabit. Perhaps it will reveal its secrets to the dust collectors, 
perhaps not.

V] Alana Hunt

Work title: PAPER TXT MESSAGES FROM KASHMIR
Material: paper
Date: 2009-2010

Brief statement on the work: In December 2009 almost 1000 paper txt msgs 
were distributed throughout Kashmir, in response to the Indian 
government’s ban on pre-paid mobile phone services in the region citing 
reasons of security. Virtually overnight over 400,000 mobile phone users 
– people conducting business, college students, families, distanced 
lovers – were left without means of telecommunication. Through the 
tongue-in-cheek distribution of an “alternative communicative tool” 
dejected pre-paid subscribers were invited to write a “paper-txt-msg” to 
anyone real or imagined, about anything they would like to write in a 
text message but were suddenly unable to do so.

The paper txt msgs moved between people’s hands in different ways and 
different places, with almost 150 eventually finding their way back to 
Delhi to form part of the current exhibition. Hopefully, this will 
develop into a small publication sometime down the track.