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  -    -  Propositions: Methods & Materials (2020-2021)

Propositions: Methods & Materials

In collaboration with Reliable Copy with support from the Rubamin Foundation

Ark is proud to announce its long-term partnership with Reliable Copy, Bangalore, with support from the Rubamin Foundation, under the framework of Propositions: Methods and Materials.

Propositions: Methods and Materials is a long-term series of educational programming where artists present their ongoing or existing enquiries in the form of workshops, seminars, and lectures. Functioning as an opening out of the artist’s studio, the programmes facilitate dialogue and critique through experimental and participatory models.

Reliable Copy is an independent, non-profit publishing house dedicated to the realisation and circulation of works, projects, and writing by artists. In addition to their publications, Reliable Copy also undertakes research projects, organises workshops, hosts lectures, and curates exhibitions.


#4 NO GOGGLES FOR EARTHRISE: Tentacular Dispositions, Delicate Revolutions

with Mochu

20-25th January 2021

Online

Applications Closed

Centred on various deviant histories, failed utopias, and renegade worlds on the run, the workshop will drift through recent instances in contemporary art that have extracted new articulations of the ‘planetary’ condition.

We begin with a revision of the famous 1968 image of the blue planet taken by NASA, depicting what is now referred to as the Earthrise. At the time of its public release, the rising and setting of the earth seen from a distant, barren vantage point afforded a new relationality between the infrastructures on the planet and the larger cosmos. Starting with a retroactive look from the 21st century, the workshop will revisit these relations through ideas from Weird fiction, Orientalist art, Counterculture movements, and Intergalactic Communism, amongst other conversations. Participants will be encouraged to recognise and respond to artistic practices that are open to diverse cosmo-technical possibilities, through presentations, screenings, and lectures. The sessions will also focus on text and video content, with regular discussions around each participant’s independent practice/s.

Mochu works with video and text arranged as installations, lectures, and publications. Techno-scientific fictions feature prominently in his practice, often overlapping with instances or figures drawn from art history and philosophy. Recent projects have explored mad geologies, psychedelic subcultures, and Indian Modernist painting. Mochu is a recipient of the Edith-Russ-Haus grant for Media Art 2020 and his practice has previously been supported by Ashkal Alwan, India Foundation for the Arts, and The Sarai Programme. He is currently based in Delhi and Istanbul.


#3 Amongst Many Ruins: Pursuing Locations
and Practices with Rakhi Peswani

5th-10th December 2020
Online

Applications Closed

Exploring various methodologies and practices that image-makers may be resorting to in these times (of syncretic and cosmetic cultures, immense information and image production, excessive access as well as impervious affiliations, social media and social distancing, too much and too little), Amongst Many Ruins is an exercise driven module that will test and practice the potential of artistic research for the present moment.

With a focus on unpacking ideas around ‘practices of the self’ and ‘care of the self’, the workshop will be anchored in the text ‘The Hermeneutics of the Subject’ by Michel Foucault – a lecture course originally delivered by the philosopher and historian in 1981-82. Exploring Foucault’s concepts through the registers of space, time, and the body, the workshop will be a process-oriented platform for artistic propositions (or improvisations) and interpretations (or misrepresentations).

Rakhi Peswani is an artist whose practice explores the various discursive and material aspects of crafts and its nuanced associations as language, especially with an emphasis on the hand-made. Her work explores the affective possibilities of materiality and labour, as well as the contexts or locations these create in contemporary image making. Apart from her practice, she has been active as an educator since 2004. She was guest faculty at Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication (Hyderabad), full-time faculty at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Bangalore), and Visiting Associate Professor at Ambedkar University (Delhi). Currently, she is an Associate Professor at Ashoka University (Sonipat).


#2 The Conditioned Image
with Chinar Shah

5th-10th September 2020
Online

Applications Closed

We can no longer engage with photography using tools of the past. Photography is a radically different category as we witness an overwhelming number of images every day. The access to images and the excess of images do not imply seeing as a physical activity leading to knowing. Instead, often images hide more than they reveal. A photograph today occurs not only within a camera, but in the software, apps, and platforms that produce, share, and circulate an image.

The workshop is an opportunity to explore this changing nature of photography through theory and practice that encompasses a broader interpretation of photographic works. We will explore the relationship between meaning, production, and distribution of images as entities dependent on each other. The workshop will be process oriented and experimental. We will use various new media techniques, platforms, and apparatus’ to make and think through some of the key aspects of contemporary visual culture. By engaging with existing modes of photography and actively exploring what the future of the medium holds, we create a space for making art in dialogue with new visual economies.

Chinar Shah is an artist, writer, and occasional curator. Her work deals with photography and its implications in moments of violence and conflict. She is the founder of Home Sweet Home, an exhibition series that uses domestic spaces to show works of art. Between 2014-2020, she taught at the Srishti Institute for Art, Design and Technology, and she is also co-editor of Photography in India: From Archives to Contemporary Practice (Bloomsbury, 2018).


#1 Drawing Conversations
with Gagan Singh

1st-7th August 2020
Online

Applications Closed

Drawing Conversations will explore the various dimensions of drawing through an exploration of the surrounding physical site, the play of word and line, the nuances of material, and the thinking that happens in the process of drawing. Is it possible to articulate the unseen moments of how thinking erupts or develops? How do we capture ideas, express emotions, build structures, and live spatial depth, while shuttling between these spaces? These are the questions around which the module will revolve.  

Gagan Singh is an artist based in New Delhi. His main preoccupation is in exploring ways of thinking through Drawing. He completed his Masters in Fine Arts from the Kent Institute of Art & Design in 2005 (Kent, UK), had his second solo exhibition at Chatterjee & Lal this September (Mumbai, India), and is currently an artist in residence at Rote Fabrik, supported by Pro Helvetia (Zurich, Switzerland).