Episodit
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On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani speak to Jayant Parashar about his family's legacy -- a pre-Independence film magazine called Film Pictorial, started in Lahore by his grandfather and great-uncle, RK Parashar and ML Parashar. A well-regarded periodical of the 1940s, Film Pictorial shut down once the brothers moved to Delhi after the 1947 Partition.
We talk about how Jayant came across the magazine, its role -- similar to other high-profile film publications of that era -- as a snapshot of South Asia's urban cinema culture straddling India and Pakistan's Independence as well as the scattershot, digital preservation of lost archives through which we reconstruct and respond to that era.
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST HERE:
Jayant Parashar is a Mumbai-based cinematographer and musician. Film Pictorial (1941-1947) was an English-language magazine on Hindustani cinema co-founded and edited by his grandfather and great-uncle in Lahore.
Credits:
Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi
Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma
Production Associate: Priya Thakur
Images courtesy Jayant Parashar via Surjit Singh
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar
Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
CONTENTS
0.00-02.30 – Introduction
02.30- 07.40– Discovering a family legacy.
07.40- 15.00 – Back issues of Film Pictorial on the internet.
15.00 - 18.51 – The Parashar brothers and their engagement with the pre-Independence film industry.
18.51 - 27.34 – The wide range of topics the magazine has explored, both serious and light-hearted versus the present day reporting on the film industry.
27.34- 31.37 – Film Pictorial after the Partition, and the value of vintage film magazines in the present.
31.37- 33.28 – How family legacies impact worldviews.
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On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani Sharma, speak to artist Pritika Chowdhry, whose solo exhibition 'Unbearable Memories, Unspeakable Histories' featuring her anti-memorials to the Partition is currently on view at the South Asia Institute, Chicago.
We talk about the politics of memorialising the 1947 South Asian Partition, the aesthetic challenge of representing collective trauma and the influence of feminist historiography on understanding the Partition.
We also touch upon drawing parallels with other colonial divisions of territory as well as ongoing civil conflict in the global south, and the limits of testimony in the contemporary period.
You can learn more about the exhibition here:
https://www.saichicago.org/exhibition/pritika-chowdhry-unbearable-memories-unspeakable-histories or at the South Asia Institute, Chicago's Instagram page @southasiainstitute.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-18.
For a time-stamped list of Contents, click here: http:/bit.ly/3CeUTWz
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST HERE:
Pritika Chowdhry is a feminist and postcolonial artist, curator, and writer whose work is in both public and private collections. Chowdhry has exhibited nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the Weisman Art Museum, Queens Museum, Hunterdon Museum, Islip Art Museum, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, DoVA Temporary, Brodsky Center, and Cambridge Art Gallery. Her work has been written up in various scholarly publications, including the journals GeoHumanities, Social Transformations Journal of the Global South, and Progress in Human Geography, in addition to news outlets such as CBS, NBC, and Hindustan Times. She is the recipient of Vilas International Travel Fellowship, Edith and Sinaiko Frank Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts, Wisconsin Arts Board grant, and Minnesota State Arts Board grant. She has presented her studio research projects at various national conferences, such as International Arts Symposium at NYU, The Contested Terrains of Globalization at UC-Irvine, and the South Asian Conference at UW-Madison. Chowdhry holds an MFA in Studio Art and an MA in Visual Culture and Gender Studies from UW-Madison and has taught at Macalester College and the College of Visual Arts. Born and raised in India, Chowdhry is currently based in Chicago.
Credits:
Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi
Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma
Intern: Priya Thakur
Images courtesy Pritika Chowdhry
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar
Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
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Puuttuva jakso?
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With two seasons behind us, ARTalaap is taking a hiatus over the summer.
We will be back soon with all-new programming -- stay tuned!
Follow us for updates and information on Instagram at @art.alaap and on Twitter @rtalaap.
You can write to us with feedback, suggestions and requests for guests at: [email protected].
Thank you for your support!
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On this episode, I Kamayani speak to Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai whose solo exhibition 'Naguftaha-e-Havva' ('The Unspoken Words of Havva') is currently on view at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai as well as online on the In Touch platform.
https://www.artintouch.in/exhibitions/13-chatterjee-lal-arshi-irshad-ahmadzai-naguftaha-e-havva-the-unspoken-words-of-havva/
We talk about journeying from a small town to a career in the visual arts, the evolution of a distinct figural language, the possibilities of abstraction as an aesthetic mode during a period of repression and Arshi's engagement with time and space in her process-based practice. We also touch upon the use of text as image, the spiritual aspect of art-making, the gendering of material and the abiding influence of Zarina and Nasreen Mohamedi.
Learn about our guest:
Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai born in Najibabad, graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts (2011) from Aligarh Muslim University and later pursued a Masters in Fine Arts from Jamia Millia Islamia (2013). She won the Inlaks Fine Art Award in 2019. Working with a range of mediums including painting, printmaking and photography, Ahmadzai’s artistic practice is centred around women. Her knowledge of Urdu, Persian and Arabic allows her to understand the nuances of language, which find their way into her work. She lives and works in Weimar, Germany.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-17
Click here for the time-stamped Contents page: bit.ly/3Ofjmyn
Click here for the English-language transcript: bit.ly/37PeIGT
Credits:
Producer: Varun Kapahi
Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma
Intern: Priya Thakur
Images: Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai; Blueprint 12, New Delhi; Shrine Empire, New Delhi.
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
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In this episode, I, Kamayani Sharma speak to the curators of the 4th Kathmandu Triennale titled "2077" -- Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung. They worked alongside Artistic Director Cosmin Costinas to mount the ongoing edition. (originally scheduled for 2020 but deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The Triennale features hundreds of artists from around the world at five venues across Kathmandu.
We talk about the Himalayan cultural zone, modern and contemporary Nepali art, decolonial curatorial approaches and the idea of indigenous worlding through aesthetics. We also touch upon the logistics of organising the Triennale in a multilingual & stratified context, the matter of continued economic support from the West, the need for government funding and the place of South Asia as a "region" in a "global" art configuration.
You can learn more about the Triennale through their social media – @kathmandu.triennale on Instagram and Facebook.
Learn about our guests:
Hit Man Gurung’s works are concerned with some of the most pressing socio-political issues of Nepal, including internal and international mass migration, the legacy of the decade-long Maoist insurgency in the country, as well as the recent pervasive effects of global capitalism in Nepal. Deeply concerned with the impact of these larger forces on individuals, communities, and society at large, Gurung infuses his paintings, documentary photo collages, performance and installation works with political conviction and personal poetry. Gurung participated in major national and international art exhibitions. He is a co-founder of artist collective ArTree Nepal.
Sheelasha Rajbhandari is interested in exploring alternative and plural narratives by learning the value of folktales, folklore, oral histories, mythologies, material culture, performance, and rituals and placing them as evidence, along with references to mainstream history and narratives. Her long term research projects and artistic practice often juxtapose these contradictions and synthesise the knowledge and experiences that result from individual and collective discourses. Through her works, she frequently tries to encounter the simple yet socially forbidden and taboo subject matters, with a focus on women’s struggles, celebrating their resilience. Her works have been a part of major international exhibitions. She is a co-founder of artist collective ArTree Nepal.
Gurung and Rajbhandari have been working collaboratively on multiple projects, including “12 Bishakh - Camp.Hub'' Post Earthquake Community Art Project, in which they were Co-Artistic Directors. They are also co-contributors to several books including ‘Breaking Views’, ‘Absolute Humidity’, a.o.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-16.
Click here for the time-stamped contents.
Credits:
Producer: Varun Kapahi
Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma
Intern: Priya Thakur
Images courtesy Kathmandu Triennale
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
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On this episode, it's gonna be just me, ARTalaap creator and your host, Kamayani Sharma.
I talk about my work on the cinema of cult Films Division auteur Pramod Pati -- through archival audio footage, clips from Pati's films, original commentary (and joking into the void.)
In light of the Indian government's recent widely-criticised move to merge public film units, I dive into an important moment in the history of the Film Division (FD) through the practice of one of its filmmakers.
I discuss how the sound design of Pramod Pati's experimental shorts, produced by the Indian government at the end of the 1960s, have a science-fictional quality. This sonic sci-fi is indicative of the futuristic ambitions of the Indian state modernising the mediascape during this era, through the technologies of radio, TV and cinema.
This episode is an adaptation of my essay "Archeology of an Experiment: The sci-fi cinema of Pramod Pati" from the Oct. 2015 issue of 'Studies in South Asian Film and Media' (citation below.)
Learn about the host:
Kamayani Sharma is an independent writer, researcher, podcaster and translator. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Vox, Momus, Aperture, Frieze, The White Review, Art Monthly, ART India and The Caravan. She has contributed to edited volumes including 'South Asian Gothic: Haunted cultures, histories and media' (University of Wales Press, 2021). A Kalpalata Fellow in Visual Culture Writing 2022 for Scroll.in, she was a recipient of the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation: TAKE On Writing Travel Grant 2015, critic-in-residence at Dharti Arts Residency 2018 and a finalist at the International Awards for Art Criticism 2020. Sharma runs South Asia’s first independent visual culture podcast ARTalaap.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-15
Credits:
Producer: Varun Kapahi
Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma
Intern: Priya Thakur
Images: Films Division
Special thanks: Amol Ranjan
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
ORIGINAL ESSAY:
Sharma, Kamayani, Archeology of an experiment: The science-fiction cinema of Pramod Pati, October 2015, Studies in South Asian Film and Media 6(2):147-164.
DOI:10.1386/safm.6.2.147_1f
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In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, speak to artist, researcher & educator Ita Mehrotra, author of the graphic book ‘Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection’ (Yoda Press, 2021). On the second anniversary of the incredible protests led by India's Muslim women against the CAA & NRC, in this episode we discuss the role of language in the public sphere, how illustration captures the contemporary differently from lens-based practices and how the graphic serial form allows movement among different registers & types of material. We also talk about mixed media methods of comics-making and how graphic nonfiction can and does function as a text for children & young adults.
Learn about our guest:
Ita Mehrotra is a visual artist, researcher and educator. Her work has been published and exhibited by Zubaan Books, Goethe Institute, AdAstra Comix, Yoda press, Fumetto Festival, The Wire and KHOJ, among others. Her recent graphic book ‘Shaheen Bagh, A Graphic Recollection’ voices moments and memories from the vast anti CAA uprising that spread across India over the winter of 2019 (Yoda Press, 2021).
Ita is currently Director of Artreach India, a not for profit that works at the intersections of art, inclusive education and community development. She has been a recipient of the Arts for Good Fellowship (Singapore Foundation), the Gender Bender Grant (Goethe Institute and Sandbox Collective), Fumetto Festival Apprenticeship Grant (Prohelvetia Swiss Arts Council), Connectors of the Future Fellowship (Swedish Institute) and Negotiating Routes: Art & Ecology Grant (KHOJ Artists Association). Ita was Visiting Faculty, Visual Arts, at Ashoka University in Spring 2021 and has an MPhil from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-14
Credits:
Producer: Abhishek S.
Intern: Priya Thakur
Images courtesy Yoda Press.
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Contents:
0.14 - 1.54 – Introduction
1.57 - 6.52 – How Ita’s academic engagement influenced her art and the significance of the university campus in political education.
6.53 - 11.43 – The use of various analog and digital media to draw and the process of making the book.
11.43 - 20.31 – Deep listening, responsive drawings, and the play between image and text.
20.32 - 28.28 – Arriving at graphic nonfiction for the documentation of the Shaheen Bagh protests, not as evidence but as an extension of the events.
28.29 - 43.19 – Structuring the book: planning out chapters and storyboarding. Understanding Shaheen Bagh beyond just resistance to CAA-NRC.
43.20 - 52.42 – Space and time on the page vs. screen.
52.43 - 58.45 – The matter of subject-position, collaborative strategies of working and using religious and caste privilege to express solidarity.
58.46 - 1.06.40 – Ita’s work as an arts-based educator and how books shape the politics of the children and young adults in the current moment.
1.06.41 - 1.12.03 – Influences and models as an artist and a comment on the future of the form in India and, more broadly, in South Asia.
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In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with art historian Aparna Kumar, recipient of the inaugural UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize in 2021 for her dissertation on the Lahore Museum — Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia (UCLA, 2018).
We discuss the South Asian museum as a locus of studying Partition through art history, how the work of artist Zarina influenced this dissertation and the violent logistics and rhetorics of dividing civilisational heritage.
We touch upon the challenges of cross-border scholarship and how the subcontinent’s contemporary religious nationalisms continue to be reflected in the visual and material archives of its fissures.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-13
A full list of textual references is also available in the Image+ Guide.
Meet Our Guest
Aparna Kumar is a Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South in the Department of History of Art at University College London. She received her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary South Asian art, twentieth-century partition history, museum studies, and postcolonial theory. Before joining UCL in 2020, Aparna was a Lecturer in Art History at UCLA, and a Curatorial Research Assistant at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Kumar’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Fulbright-Nehru Research Program, the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), the Critical Language Scholarship Program, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation project, Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia, was awarded the inaugural UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize in 2021.
Credits:
Producer: Abhishek S
Intern: Priya Thakur
Images: Aparna Kumar
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Contents: 1.34 - 8.35 – Aparna’s academic journey.
8.36 - 15.56 – Writing on South Asian visual culture through the Partition and the Lahore Museum.
15.57 - 17.17 – How Zarina’s works inspired by the Partition influenced this dissertation.
17.18 - 22.39 – The museum and material archive as a site of conflict and contestation.
22.40 - 27.08 – The “travel itinerary” of Mohenjo Daro’s Priest King and Dancing Girl*.
27.09 - 35.04 – The language used to discuss Partitioned objects.
35.05 - 43.19 – The machinery of the Partition enters the Lahore Museum.
43.20 - 45.32 – The problem of the border and the “regional” as an analytic.
46.34 - 50.02 – The problem of cross-border access for South Asian scholars.
50.03 - 55.07 – Scholars whose work made possible and informed this dissertation (listed in References).
55.08-1.01.18 – Contemporary hypernationalism and its effects on culture: the case of India’s National Museum and the Central Vista Project.
1.01.19-1.07.43 – The return of the Priest-King to Pakistan: what does repatriation mean in the subcontinental context? -
In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with artist Prabhakar Pachpute, among the winners of the Artes Mundi Prize 2020 about his artistry and engagement with coal mining in his native Chandrapur District, Maharashtra. Pachpute "works in an array of mediums and materials including drawing, light, stopmotion animations, sound and sculptural forms. His use of charcoal has a direct connection to his subject matter and familial roots, coal mines and coal miners."
We discuss highlights from 10 years of Prabhakar's practice including recent shifts therein, his formative years as a young artist at Mumbai's Clark House Initiative and how the aesthetic mode he adopted captures the political and ecological aspects of mining in the era of extractive capitalism (disguised as "development"). We also talk about frequent comparisons with South African artist William Kentridge, inspiration from contemporary artists grappling with history under antagonistic regimes, and the value of artistic research and practice as a collective, peer-driven process.Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-12.
Click here to access the English-language transcript for this episode: https://bit.ly/37HrjIB
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Intern: Priya Thakur
Translation and transcription: Akansha Naredy & Priya Thakur
Images: Experimenter & Artes Mundi 9
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
References:
Manik 'Grace' Godghate, 'Ti Geli Tehva Rimjhim', Chandramaadhaviche Pradesh , 1977.
Lajja Shah, 'The Wall Street Journal', ART India, pp. 87-89, Vol. 20, Issue 3, 2017.
Ana Bilbao, 'Mining Colombian contemporary art: histories, scales and techniques of gold extraction', Burlington Contemporary, May 2019.
Kathryn Yusoff, 'Mine as Paradigm', e-flux, June 2021.
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In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Jyoti Nisha, filmmaker, writer and scholar. She is the director of 'BR Ambedkar: Now And Then', a widely anticipated, partially-crowdfunded documentary that is now readying for release. In her essay, ‘Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship’ [Economic & Political Weekly, May 2020], she theorised about the politics of the gaze from her perspective as a Dalit woman viewer and media researcher. Jyoti was Director’s Assistant on Neeraj Ghaywan's Geeli Pucchi [Dharma Productions, 2021], a short that was part of the Netflix anthology, Ajeeb Dastaans. We discuss growing up as a young woman in UP of the 1990s and 2000s, how Jyoti came to filmmaking via journalism, screenwriting and academia, working on - of all things! - a Dharma movie and her journey, artistic and logistical, towards the completion of her upcoming documentary 'BR Ambedkar: Now and Then'. By way of Jyoti’s own essay, African-American film history and the polemical theories of the documentarian Trinh T. Minh-ha, we unpack the idea of the oppositional bahujan gaze unto Indian cinema and the complicated question of how realism in Indian cinema is part of a Brahmanical aesthetic scheme.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-11.
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Images: Jyoti Nisha
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
References: Jyoti Nisha, 'Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, Issue No. 20, 16 May, 2020
bell hooks, 'The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Representation', Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992.
Trinh T. Minh-ha, 'The Totalizing Quest of Meaning', When The Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Politics, Routledge: London, New York, 1991.
Yashica Dutt, Coming Out As Dalit, Aleph Book Company, 2019.
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In this episode, I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Shukla Sawant and Annapurna Garimella, Founder Trustees of the Culture Workers Support Trust, an organisation set up in 2019 to and I’m quoting them directly “spread awareness among culture workers about their rights and responsibilities". We discuss the modes and methods by which labour in India's vast culture sector can start to organise and collectivise, how stakeholders across public and private sectors can come together for worker-oriented solutions to entrenched problems and how forms of workplace violence including gender & caste-based harassment (as that embodied by the #MeToo movement in the art world) cannot be delinked from broader issues of labour rights such as wage security and equitable contracts. We also discuss how in the network capital-dominated industries of the arts, legislative and judicial processes are necessary to enforce fair work conditions. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-10. Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Images: Culture Workers Support Trust
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
References:
Christine Ithurbide, 'Beyond Bombay art district: Reorganization of art production into a polycentric territory at metropolitan scale', Belgeo [Online], 3 | 2014, 19 Dec. 2014.
- and Soraya Hamache, 'Art and Cinema Industries in India: Norms, Workers and Territories', Workshop at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, Centre d'études Inde et de l Asie du Sud, Newsletter No. 13 (Summer 2016), https://sites.google.com/site/ceiasnewsletter/-newsletters-20152016/newsletter-no-13---summer-2016/art-and-cinema-industries-in-india-norms-workers-and-territories.
- and Tejshree Savara, 'Legal Handbook for the Artist Community in India', UNESCO in partnership with New Delhi Office, Sept. 2020.
Kavita Singh, '2019 Arts & Museum Summit Keynote 3: Museums, New Locations, New Definitions', Asia Society Delhi, 12 Oct. 2019.
John Rawls, 'A Theory of Justice', The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, (1971) 1999. 'Google Spreadsheet Reveals How Much the Art World Earns', Frieze, 4 Jun. 2019.
'Journalist Priya Ramani not guilty in MJ Akbar defamation case, rules Delhi court', Scroll.in, 17 Feb 2021. Press Trust of India, 'Delhi Police interrupts India Art Fair after complaint of anti-CAA paintings; artwork was about India’s women, clarify participating artists', Firstpost, 3 Feb. 2020.
'Indian Journalists Union defends media's right to report on MeToo allegations', Internet Freedom Foundation, 23 Jan. 2020.
Ophelia Lai, Subodh Gupta Settles Defamation Case Over Instagram #MeToo Allegations, ArtAsiaPacific, 3 Mar. 2020.
Benita Fernando, 'What is ailing the ‘people’s biennale’?', Livemint, 29 Mar. 2020.
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As a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Rakesh Sengupta researched early Indian cinema. His essay 'Writing from the Margins of Media: Screenwriting Practice and Discourse During the First Indian Talkies', published in the Dec 2018 issue of Bioscope [no. 9.2] won the Best Journal Article by Screenwriting Research Network and also received High Commendation for Screen's Annette Kuhn Debut Essay Prize. On today's episode, we talk about the way in which the lack of script archives dictated the methods of research, how the vocation of screenwriting propelled fantasies of self-improvement and socioeconomic ascendancy in the 1930s and 1940s and the way in which the study of early cinema has been revitalised in the contemporary context of OTT and web programming. We also have some lovely anecdotes about serendipitous discoveries of forgotten Indian cinema scripts in other corners of the world.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-9.
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar
Images: Rakesh Sengupta
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
References:
Ashish Rajadhyaksha, 'The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology', The Journal of Arts and Ideas, 1987.
Kaushik Bhaumik, 'The Emergence of the Bombay Film Industry, 1913-1936', D. Phil Diss., University of Oxford, 2001.
Priya Jaikumar, 'Cinema at the End of Empire', Duke University Press, 2006.
Debashree Mukherjee, 'Notes on a Scandal: Writing Women's Film History Against an Absent Archive', Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies' [Vol. 4.1], pp. 9-30, Jan. 2013.
Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City',Columbia University Press, 2020.
'Somewhere Between Human, Nonhuman and Woman: Shanta Apte's Theory of Exhaustion', Feminist Media Histories [Vol. 6.1], pp. 21- 51, 2020.
Tom Gunning, 'The Cinema of Attractions', Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
André Gaudreault and Phillipe Marion, 'The Cinema as a Model for the Genealogy of Media', Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Tecnologies [8.4], pp. 12-18, Dec. 2002.
Ravi Vasudevan, 'The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema', Palgrave Macmillan US, 2010.
Rachel Dwyer, 'Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema', Routledge, 2006.
Rosie Thomas, 'Bombay Before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies', SUNY Press, 2015.
Sudhir Mahadevan, 'A Very Old Machine: The Many Origins of the Cinema in India', SUNY Press, 2015.
André Bazin, 'What Is Cinema?', trans. Hugh Gray, University of California Press, 1967.
Stephen Hughes, 'The Production of the Past: Early Tamil Film History as a Living Archive', Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, pp. 71-80, June 2013.
Ravikant, 'Words in Motion Pictures: A Social History of the Language of Hindi Cinema (c. 1931 till present)', Unpublished diss., University of Delhi, 2015.
Henry Jenkins, 'Converge Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide', NYU Press, 2006.
Virchand Dharamsey, 'Light of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema', 1912-1934, eds. Suresh Chabria, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Niyogi Books, 1994.
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At the Sundance Film Festival 2021, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh won the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change and the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category for their debut feature 'Writing With Fire'. On today’s episode, we discuss the political economy of documentary filmmaking, its practitioners’ love-hate relationship with the state (every government media organisation in India is name-checked in this episode!), the influence and legacy of humanism in nonfiction film and whether its future in South Asia lies in TikTok-type formats.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-8.
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar
Images: Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
References:
Kerstin Stutterheim, 'Documentary Film Production Under Neoliberal Circumstances - A Genre in Change', International Science and Humanities Conference 2016, Sharjah.
Kamayani Sharma, 'Reason Being', Artforum, 20 Jun 2019.
Kartik Nair. "Ramsay Brothers: The Men, The Movies, The Memory”. M.Phil Cinema Studies Diss. SAA, JNU. 2010.
Rishi Majumder, 'Ramsay International', Motherland, 2012.
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18 May marks a watershed event in South Korea's ultimately successful pro-democracy movement - the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. As we come up on its 41st anniversary, I speak to Natasha Ginwala, co-Artistic Director, alongside Defne Ayas, of the 13th Gwangju Biennale (1 April 2021 - 9 May 2021). Against the backdrop of Gwangju's position as a cultural event with a revolutionary ethos, we unpack the philosophy driving this pandemic edition of the Biennale - notably through the work of Catherine Malabou, Yuk Hui, Maya Indira Ganesh, Djamila Ribeiro and others - and how it is incarnated in the works exhibited and practices platformed. We talk about how a biennale is mounted during a global quarantine, what the significance of organic and artificial or machinic intelligence is during an age of unreason as well as how the ghosts of history cause new political ruptures through the phenomenon of recursivity. We also touch upon the role of a biennale as a recorder of change and its paradoxical implication in the very orders it aims to challenge.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide and view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-7.
You can explore and experience the 13th Gwangju Biennale through:
- Its official website: https://13thgwangjubiennale.org/
- A downloadable guidebook [https://13thgwangjubiennale.org/pdf/13thGB-Guidebook-ENG-DEF.pdf]
- Instagram page [https://www.instagram.com/mindsrisingspiritstuning/]
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Intern: Aastha Anupriya
Images: The 13th Gwangju Biennale
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.
References:
Okwui Enwezor, 'The Politics of Spectacle: The Gwangju Biennale and the Asian Century', Spectacle East Asia (Issue 15), Fall 2010.
Gi-Wook Shin, 'Introduction', Contentious Kwangju: The May 18th Uprising in Korea's Past and Present, eds. Gi-Wook Shin and Kyung Moon Hwang, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
'Stronger Than Bone', 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Biennale Foundation and Archive Books, Berlin, 2021.
Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain?, trans. Sebastian Rand, Fordham University Press, 2008.
Yuk Hui, 'Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics', e-flux Journal #86, 2017.
Vladan Joler & Kate Crawford, 'Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources', anatomyof.ai, 2018.
Mark Fisher, 'Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?', Zero Books, 2009.
Djamila Ribeiro, 'Black Feminism for a New Civilizational Framework', Sur: International Journal on Human Rights, trans. Murphy MacMahon, December 2016.
Maya Indira Ganesh, 'Between Flesh: Tech Degrees of Separation', Minds Rising, 13th Gwangju Biennale, August 2020.
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On this episode, against the backdrop of Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement that arose in the wake of the military junta's coup of 1 February 2021, I speak to acclaimed Burmese artist Moe Satt about his performance- and multimedia- based practice. We talk about how visual arts practitioners navigate censorship and restraints on civil liberties. We also discuss the way in which Myanmar's independent cultural organisations like AMCA are engaging in visual activism, how Generation Z and Boomers alike are splitting up across the virtual and actual domains and joining hands against the junta and, indeed, the importance of hands as symbols of solidarity in Moe's work, which we discuss in detail.
Click here to access the Image Guide+ and view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-6.
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Intern: Aastha Anupriya
Images: Moe Satt
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar
References:
Ellen Pearlman 'A Brief History of Contemporary Art in Myanmar', Hyperallergic, 10 July 2017.
Lisa Movius, 'The Artists on the frontline of Myanmar's deadly protests', The Art Newspaper, 1 March 2021.
Nathalie Johnston, 'The Artists Fighting for a Different Future', Frieze, 19 February 2021.
Sarah Cascone, 'After a Military Coup, Artists Across Myanmar Are Making Protest Art to Share Their Struggle for Democracy With the World', Artnet, 16 February 2021.
Hannah Beech, 'Paint, Poems and Protest Anthems: Myanmar's Coup Inspires The Art of Defiance', The New York Times, 2 March 2021.
Ma Thanegi, 'A brief history of Myanmar modern art', Artstream Myanmar.
Yin Ker, 'Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Premises for Burmese Contemporary Art with Po Po, Tun Win Aung, Wah Nu and Min Thein Sung.', Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 2018. 46: 26-37.
Nathalie Johnston, ArtReview, 'Myanmar Artists Are Making History', 1 April 2020.
Boris Groys, 'On Art Activism', e-flux Journal #56, June 2014.
Nicholas Mirzoeff, 'The Right to Look', Critical Inquiry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring 2011), pp. 473-496.
Inêz Beleza Barreiros, "Theory is not just words on a page. It's also things that are made": Interview with Nicholas Mirzoeff', Buala, 27 June 2017.
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This episode is the second in a two-part series on political webcomics in India. In the context of an increasingly repressive regime, the role of allegory, especially in the mode of fantasy and parody, becomes vital. On the Indian Internet, an example is the figure of Rashtraman, a dubious superhero starring in his own webcomic series. I speak to its creator Appupen, a visual artist and musician who tells stories from the mythical dimension called Halahala. Having published several books of graphic fiction, he launched his online comic series with the popular superhero satire 'Rashtraman' and the politically charged ‘Dystopian Times’ in 2015. He is the founder/editor of Brainded India, an arts collective with an agenda. We discuss how visual satire can show us the workings of power, the history of cartooning as political critique in post-Independence India and why the MCU is a technocratic dream.
Click here to access the Image Guide+ & view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-5
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini MukherjeeAudio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Images: Instagram @appupen
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
Dedicated to Dai, whose booming voice will always be remembered.
References:
Prabhat Patnaik, 'Neoliberalism and Fascism', Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 27 Feb. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2277976019901029
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This episode is the first of a two-part series on political webcomics in India. In the context of protests, arrests and judicial intimidation of citizens including artists, we take a look at how the graphic strip format is being deployed to respond to political events in India. I speak to Meher Manda and Mayukh Goswami, co-creators of Jamun Ka Ped, an Instagram-based webcomic that since the NRC-CAA protests of 2019, has been chronicling and commenting on the political and social crises raging in India under the Modi administration, including the Indian Supreme Court's verdict regarding the ownership of the mob-demolished Babri Mosque site, the abrogation of the Indian Constitution's Article 370 which ended Kashmir' autonomy, the February 2020 Delhi pogroms and most recently the farmers’ protests against the three agriculture laws [which we discussed in Artalaap’s third episode]. Today, we discuss the webcomic as a self-consciously political form, how the internet has affected traditional graphic or strip design and the hostility that Indian artists are facing from the state.
Click here to access the Image Guide+ & view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-4Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Musical arrangement: Jayant ParasharImages: Instagram @jamun_ka_ped
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
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On this episode, in the wake of India’s 71st anniversary as a republic, we’ll speak about the farmers’ protests that have been raging across the country for more than two months now in opposition to the three farm laws enacted in September 2020. I speak to Shweta Bhattad, a farmer and visual artist, performer, sculptor and founder member of the Gram Art Project collective, a group of farmers, artists, and other members of the community based in her village of Paradsinga in Madhya Pradesh. With a focus on issues of women’s safety, education and the female body, Shweta works with agricultural materials and roots her artistic practice in the context of rural cultivation as a political, social and economic mode of life. She has exhibited widely, including at the Vancouver Biennale in 2014 and at KHOJ, New Delhi in 2017 as part of Evidence Room, a retrospective of a five-year public art initiative called Negotiating Routes: Ecologies of the Byways. Along with her co-founders of the Gram Art Project, Shweta won the FICA Public Art Grant in 2015 for India's first land art festival, the Gram Dhara Chitra Utsav. On today’s episode, we discuss her artistry and farming work as well as the Gram Art Project's initiatives, against the backdrop of the farmers' protests.
Click here to access the Image Guide+ and view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-3.Click here to access the time-stamped English language transcript here: https://cutt.ly/PkkDWDf
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar
Images: Shweta Bhattad & the Gram Art ProjectAudio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Translation and transcription: Akansha Naredy
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
References:Kabir Jhala, 'How an artist-led newspaper in Delhi is helping to organise the 'world's biggest protest', The Art Newspaper, 25 January 2021.
Kamayani Sharma, 'A Good Harvest', Take On Art: Take Ecology, January-June 2017.
Snigdha Poonam. 'Suicide Town', Huffington Post, 1 June 2016.
Vandana Kalra, 'How the farmers' protest found resonance in art', The Indian Express, 17 January 2021.
Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, Continuum (London, New York), 2004.
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Photographer Hari Katragadda & writer/editor Shweta Upadhyay were awarded The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts' Photobook Grant 2020 for their collaboration 'I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you'. In this episode, we talk about this award-winning work through its makers' process and influences and the contemporary status of the photobook in India, in the wake of Dayanita Singh's pioneering practice. The route we take winds through discussions of ancient poetry, avant-garde cinema and Gothic marriages.
Click here to access the Image Guide & view the images being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-2.
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar
Images: Harikrishna Katragadda & Shweta Upadhyay
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
Dedicated to little Bodhi, who'll hear his aunt before he sees her.
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
References:
Lavinia Greenlaw, 'The Vast Extent: On Seeing And Not Seeing Further', The White Review, February 2019.
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India's first major private museum of modern and contemporary art, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi reopens on 5 January 2021 after a period of closure in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. I speak to Akansha Rastogi, Senior Curator (Exhibitions & Programs), KNMA about a decade of institutional programming, her own curatorial practice within the museum space and of course the stakes and possibilities of the museum as a political and social site in 2020, now 2021, against the backdrop of movements for racial and caste justice and the COVID-19 crisis.
Click here to access the image guide:
https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-1.
Credits:
Producer: Tunak Teas
Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee
Marketing: Dipalie Mehta
Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar
Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
Images: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair
References:
Saloni Mathur, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display, University of California Press, 2007.
Nancy Adajania, ‘New Media Overtures before New Media Practice in India’, in Gayatri Sinha (ed.), Art and Visual Culture in India 1857-2007 (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2009). - Näytä enemmän
