Starting out in the early nineties Indian video art has so far produced about thirty artists who have incorporated this ‘new’ medium in their means of expression. Their video works provide, in an original way, an account of the dramatic political history and the rapidly changing society of the Indian subcontinent. The programme will screen a wide range of single screen works from these experimental artists who all live and work in the big cities of India. Featured artists include Nalini Malani, Tushar Joag, Valay Shende (Mumbai), Anita Dube (New Delhi) and Pushpamala N (Bangalore).
Programme curated by Johan Pijnappel.
Films
- Director Memory: Record / Erase
Nalini Malani; India; 1996; 10min
Malani’s first animation is an interpretation of ‘The Job’ by Bertold Brecht. It tells of an impoverished worker who spent four years disguised as a man before it was discovered that she was a woman. Using a tactile technique, Malani painted directly onto glass drawing over or erasing the previous images. The work captures the ephemeral and unreliable nature of memory and identity.
- Stinging Kiss (Chingari Chumma)
Director Tejal Shah; India; 2000; 8min
“Stinging Kiss is a ‘fairytale’ exploring the spaces of queer desire that remain unaddressed by Bollywood. Conventionally, a heroine would be abducted by a bandit, taken to his den and tied up only for the hero to come and save her just in time. But here an unexpected twist subverts this typical Hindi film climax…”
- Phantoms
Director Tushar Joag; India; 2002; 4min
A documentary on the politics of hate, made soon after and in response to the bloody Gujurat riots of 2002.
- Scrolls
Director Valay Shende; India; 2002; 4min
Scrolls juxtaposes footage from a popular TV serialisation of the epic Indian tale Mahabharata, with scrolling news text. The artist weaves together a commentary on contemporary India polarized on religious lines, with an uneasy mix of myth, violence and entertainment.
- Unity In Diversity
Director Nalini Malani; India; 2003; 7min
Unity In Diversity is based on Raja Ravi Varma’s C19th allegorical painting ‘Galaxy of Musicians’, showing 11 female musicians dressed in the different costumes of India: signifying unity in diversity. The video contrasts this with later histories of the rise of fascism and the genocide in Gujarat in 2002. What starts off as a visual fairytale, where all parts of the nation play in harmony together, ends up in a bloodbath.
- Kissa-E-Noor Mohammed (Garam Hawa)
Director Anita Dube; India; 2004; 15min
Originally a video installation, this piece seeks to portray the nine ‘rasas’ (‘essences’ or ‘sentiments’ in Indian aesthetics, the characteristic qualities of literature, drama and music) through a character called Noor Mohammed, who transforms from an amiable and affable man into an aggressive fundamentalist.
- Jataka Trilogy
Director Tushar Joag; India; 2004; 7min
Amidst media saturated memories assembled from “conflated celluloid images of butchery, war footage and animated cartoons,” Tushar Joag attempts to rediscover values and create a meaning in life through art. The title refers to the Jakata tales, Indian folk stories passed down and reinterpreted by each new generation.
- National Pudding & Indigenous Salad (Rashtriy Kheer & Desiy Salad)
Director Pushpamala N; India; 2004; 11min
Based entirely on material found in family recipe books dating from the 1950s and ‘60s, the film presents the modern Indian family as exemplifying the ideals of the newly formed Indian nation. With scribbled domestic lists, personal memos, poems and classroom notes, recent history is distanced and treated as excavated past.
Text taken from the ICO website.