[Reader-list] [Announcements] Seminar on KP Krishnakumar and the Kerala Radical Group at SAA, JNU

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

The Office of Contemporary Art Norway, and CoLab Art & Architecture,  
Bangalore, in cooperation with the School of Art & Aesthetics, JNU in  
New Delhi, India announces:

QUESTIONS & DIALOGUE:
A RADICAL MANIFESTO
A seminar around the Practice of K. P. Krishnakumar and the Kerala  
Radical Group

Saturday, 16 January 2010 / 10:30 – 17:30
School of Art & Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi, India
www.jnu.ac.in/saa/>
SPEAKERS

Anita Dube, artist, art historian and critic based in Delhi, India
Gavin Jantjes, artist and curator based in Oslo, Norway
Amar Kanwar, artist and filmmaker based in Dehli, India
Will Bradley, art critic and curator based in Oslo, Norway


This one-day seminar, the second research initiative organised by the  
Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo, in cooperation with CoLab  
Art & Architecture, Bangalore, surveying the traditions of modernism  
in India, will take as its point of departure the artistic and  
political practice of K. P. Krishnakumar and the Kerala Radical Group  
of Painters and Sculptors, which he helped found in the late 1980s.  
Coming from a predominantly working-class background, the Kerala  
Radical Group attempted to stake their claim on what they perceived  
as a bourgeois art world. As an artist's group it made it's mark with  
the manifesto Questions & Dialogue, which proposed a political agenda  
that interrogated the role of cultural production in relation to  
local and national politics, labour, inequality and social  
transformation. While espousing a radical politics, the group did not  
consciously attempt to make an aesthetic transformation in their  
work, remaining instead within the modernist framework and a received  
aesthetic language. The group disbanded in 1989 after the death of  
Krishnakumar, with an air of frustration and the desire to re-think  
their position.

The analysis of the Kerala Radical Group and its legacy will provide  
the basis for a wider reassessment and critical reappraisal of  
particular moments and movements in recent art history. Further, the  
seminar will look at contemporary artists' practices and use case  
studies to understand the role of aesthetic strategies in addressing  
the political. During the seminar there will be a display of material  
relating to K. P. Krishnakumar in the gallery at the School of Art  
and Aesthetics courtesy of the collection of the Museum of  
Contemporary Art Antwerp (MuHKA), Belgium.

About the speakers
Will Bradley is an art critic and curator based in Oslo. His  
publications include the books Art and Social Change: A Critical  
Reader (editor, Tate Publishing and Afterall Books, 2007), Self- 
Organisation / Counter-economic Strategies (co-editor, Sternberg  
Press, 2007) and the essays 'The New New Monuments' (Metropolis M,  
2008) and 'Dreaming of Dreaming' (for the 'Dream Politics' edition of  
UKS Forum, 2009). He has curated many exhibitions, including 'Forms  
of Resistance' (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2007, with Charles Esche  
and Phillip van den Bossche) and 'Radical Software', on the  
underground influences on Open Source culture (Wattis Institute, San  
Francisco, 2006).

Anita Dube is an artist based in Delhi. Initially trained as an art  
historian and critic, Dube creates works with a conceptual language  
that valorises the sculptural fragment as a bearer of personal and  
social memory, history, mythology, and phenomenological experience.  
Employing a variety of found objects drawn from the realms of the  
industrial (foam, plastic, wire), craft (thread, beads, velvet), the  
body (dentures, bone), and the readymade (ceramic eyes), Dube  
investigates a very human concern with both personal and societal  
loss and regeneration. Dube was a member of the Kerala Radical Group.  
She is the author of the Manifesto Questions & Dialogue, written in  
1987.

Gavin Jantjes is a curator for International Contemporary Art at The  
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo. Jantjes has  
been a member of the Arts Council of Great Britain, an advisor for  
the Tate Gallery in London and the artistic director of the Henie- 
Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo. His works are displayed in public and  
private collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London;  
Arts Council of Great Britain, London; Wolverhampton City Art  
Gallery, Great Britain; Coventry City Museum and the National Museum  
of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA.  
Jantjes is currently spearheading 'Visual Century', a multimedia  
project that aims to promote a critical reappraisal of South African  
Art History.

Amar Kanwar is an artist and filmmaker based in New Delhi. Emerging  
from the Indian sub continent, his films are complex, contemporary  
narratives that connect intimate personal spheres of existence to  
larger social political processes. His work maps a journey of  
exploration revealing our relationship with the politics of power,  
violence, sexuality and justice. Recent solo exhibitions have been at  
the Stediljk Museum, Amsterdam and the Haus der Kunst, Munich. He has  
participated in Documenta 11 and documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany and  
is also the recipient of the 1st Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary  
Art, Norway and an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Maine College of  
Art, USA. His films are also shown at film festivals and he has  
received several awards like the Golden Gate Award, San Francisco  
International Film Festival, the Golden Conch, Mumbai International  
Film Festival, Jury's Award, Film South Asia, Nepal.

About the cooperation between OCA and CoLab in 'Reflections on Indian  
Modernism'
This seminar is organised for OCA by Suman Gopinath and Grant Watson,  
guest curators for a wider project entitled 'Reflections on Indian  
Modernism’. The project explores the historical roots of modernism  
within visual art in India through a series of seminars, publications  
and exhibitions. 'Questions & Dialogue – A Radical Manifesto' follows  
'Nasreen Mohammedi' – a seminar that took place in Delhi in January  
2009. This resulted in 'Nasreen Mohammedi: Notes', a solo exhibition  
dedicated to the artist initiated and exhibited at OCA in March 2009  
and currently on tour organized by OCA to Milton Keynes Gallery, UK,  
Lunds Konsthall, Sweden and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.  
'Reflections on Indian Modernism' is supported by OCA's designation  
of 03–funds* from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further  
support is provided by the Norwegian Embassy in Delhi by way of  
hospitality.

*The purpose of the 03–funds is to further develop cooperation and  
professional networking between OCA and the constituency of artists,  
independent cultural producers and organisations located in or  
associated to such countries. This includes but is not limited to  
'professional research visits by cultural producers, artists, and  
curators', 'short-term residencies for cultural producers and  
artists', 'the development of seminars, conferences, art projects,  
workshops, etc. that focus on the further development of professional  
exchange and networking between and among countries', and 'project  
development (and pilot projects) on an international scale.'

This seminar is free and open to the public. For more information  
please contact colab_aa at yahoo.com   /   +91 98860 74175   or  Marthe  
Tveitan at marthe at oca.no.




Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net


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