[Reader-list] Artists at Work

[Shveta]

dear all,

Participate in the performance of last rites for the unclaimed dead, 
test your limits in an audition that invites you to act the victim, 
watch amateur cinema and engage in discussions with the film makers, 
draft an application for a job that blurs distinctions between time for 
work, creativity, thinking and leisure, visualise the indiscernible and 
the invisible, witness the slow, meditative reworking of a well known 
philosophical text, read secret letters from an archive from the future 
which has implications for everyone, listen to the simultaneous playing 
of anthems of all the nations, engage with the predicaments and 
serendipities of drawing the world, climb up or sit a while in a 
structure designed to disintegrate over time, contemplate the ironies of 
capital, make stories within stories within stories...

Come join the artists at work in Sarai Reader 09.

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Artists at Work || Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition
at Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon
(Address and directions at the end of this mail)

6 OCTOBER (Saturday) >> Noon to 6:00 PM >> ACT THE VICTIM || Paribartana 
Mohanty

You are free
Be 'the subject'
An Instrument
Witness
the Event
Act of Opening or Closing
Try to Remember
Imitate or Respond
Construct a Fiction
Obsession or Release
Or Search

Act the Victim: A Public Audition-cum-Performance


8 OCTOBER (Monday) >> 4:00 – 7:00 PM >> Screening and discussion of 
“W1RK Field 0.25” >> WALA+Kush Badhwar

This video is from a trip to Mumbai that Walas and Kush undertook 
together and in which they accessed three spaces: the roof of a 
28-storey Andheri apartment block, a hidden corner of Mahim Fort, and a 
river-bed of trash in Mankhurd, adopting perspectives of development, 
history and waste from the spaces, and engaging in dialogue about the 
city from these perspectives. The video will grow through screenings, 
conversations and further shooting in different locations, which will be 
added back into the video before subsequent screenings. In this way, 
W1RKF is the making of an unscripted, extended and infinite loop 
involving conversation, performance, editing and mediation.


8 OCTOBER (Monday) >> 7:00 PM >> UNSUNG IN LIFE, UNCLAIMED IN DEATH: A 
Conversation as Death Ritual For The Unclaimed Dead

Subodh Kerkar, in collaboration with Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar

Thousands of dead bodies lie unclaimed in morgues, railway tracks and 
roads in India. In New Delhi alone, more than ten bodies of homeless 
people are disposed off without any mourners. Katharina Kakar and Subodh 
Kerkar chose to make three death masks of unclaimed bodies from a 
hospital morgue. Death masks were a tool in Europe in the 18th and 19th 
century to preserve the identity of unknown bodies, before photography 
was invented.

For the ritual, the artists have created a sleeping head – a large 
replica of Constantine Brancusi’s sleeping muse – as a memorial for the 
unknown dead. The head also acts as a ‘pind’ (a large ball of rice, 
decorated with sesame seeds, turmeric and sindoor used in Hindu last 
rite rituals) for the last rites of the unclaimed.

Subodh and Katharina will have a conversation as the death ritual for 
the unclaimed dead. The dialogue will include a number of real life 
stories. With Sarai Reader 09, they inaugurate their series, ‘Unsung in 
life, unclaimed in death’.


EVERY WEEK

Wednesdays and Saturdays >> Drawing as a Mental Exercise || Gagandeep Singh

Saturdays >> Story within a Story || Astha Butail

Tuesdays >> Untitled || Kumar Ranjan

Wednesdays >> Visualising the Invisible: Reading and Writing Nietzche || 
Belinder Dhanoa

Fridays and Saturday >> Why Ask the Old Questions? || Parismita Singh

Tuesday-Friday >> Bureau of Contemporary Jobs || Cybermohalla Ensemble

Saturdays >> Harkat School/Unschool for Performance Arts || Inder Salim

Tuesdays and Fridays >> The Indiscernible || Suraj Rai

Tuesdays >> The Flyover || Anurag Sharma + Anush Singh

Thursdays >> KarmaLeaks + Portside || India Art Power / Since 1900

Watch keynotes daily>>
Financial Markets and the Ironies of Capital || S. Ananth
Occupancy as a Disobedience Kit || Solomon Benjamin

Daily screenings >> Amateur Cinema >> Presented by Ishita Tiwary

Read artist proposals, books on city, music, graphic books, journals on 
art and more.

Browse through and buy books with questions, practices, insights by over 
100 researchers and practitioners over the last decade (P.T.O.); about a 
speculation for a building (Cybermohalla Hub); and a record of 
conversations between artists, in a studio context in Delhi (City as 
Studio 2).

Find updates from artists, images of the exhibition, details about 
forthcoming events at 
http://www.facebook.com/groups/260748660703453/?fref=ts

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SARAI READER 09 is an ongoing contemporary art exhibition (18 August 
2012 – 16 April 2013), curated by Raqs Media Collective. The exhibition 
is a collaboration between Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, and Devi Art Foundation, 
Gurgaon. Over nine months, roughly 100 
artists/researchers/practitioners, invited through an open call, will be 
working within the exhibition context.

The third deadline for call for proposals is still open. See 
www.sarai.net for details.

Devi Art Foundation is in Gurgaon. The nearest Metro Station is Huda 
City Center. To reach the Foundation, take an auto from outside the 
metro station, for "Apparel House". Take the first right after Apparel 
House, and very soon, the Foundation is on your left.

Map here:
http://www.deviartfoundation.org/map.htm

Address:
Devi Art Foundation, Sirpur House, Plot 39, Sector 44, Gurgaon.
Tel: 0124-4888177

Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition is generously supported by the Royal 
Embassy of Norway, Delhi.