Peers 2009 - Artist Residency Publication

PEERS 2009

The Annual Student Residency at KHOJ Studios

KHOJ International Artists’ Association S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi - 110017 Phone: +91-11-65655874, +91-11-65655873 E-mail: interact@khojworkshop.org

Production, Publishing and Copyright

http://khojworkshop.org/ Content and Editing Natasha Ginwala, PEERS 2009 - Critic in Residence PEERS 2009 - Artists in Residence Aliya Pabani Kriti Gupta Dorendra Waribam Pratik Sagar Shine Shivan Concept & Design Revanta Sarabhai Photographs and Video Stills Kriti Gupta, M.K. Saranjit, Natasha Ginwala, Pratik Sagar, Shine Shivan, Waribam Dorendra Printed at Archana, New Delhi www.archanapress.com

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An Address To The Unknowable...

My writings throughout this residency have emerged as notes in the margin, rather than elaborate essays. It seems contrived to formulate a fixed piece of writing based on a lived process that is still a continuing quest of sorts. This 4-week journey has raised critical questions for each of us; while some have transformed into purposeful voyages acquiring visual dimensions; others continue to float and unfold in the subterranean niches of mindscapes. Though the experiential spirit is not something that can be pinned down to a document; it is through the terrain of visual language, reflective ponderings and socio-cultural environment that ephemeral currents may be explored.

The experience of being in the midst of creative activity and contributing to the unleashing of energy and ideas has been extraordinary; as over time the coming together of a varied set of young art practitioners led to the building of a unique dialogical space that generated freedom for self-cultivation within an ambience of collective enquiry. Working outside the academic realm has allowed resident artists to challenge normative standards of art-making by crossing disciplinary thresholds; thereby expanding their oeuvre of artistic expression.

While viewing art-works as showcased end-products, what we might miss out on is the layered nature of creative endeavours - processbased cycles, the pulse of imbibed logic and the flow of intuitive subjectivities. Participating in this residency has enabled me to witness creative impulses oscillating between the meditative to the frenetic, and to significantly engage with covert in-betweens, like filtration of thoughts, construction of forms and distillation of intent.

Often such vital steps appear as unknowable realities in the garb of interiorized characters that may not be seen but strongly felt. And hence, these words may be nothing beyond corporeal deposits of intensely felt momentum.

An installed statement meant to raise debate on the logic of visual frameworks and language of spatial networks, by presenting the three-dimensional space as an active agent in generating meaning and altering response to art-works that lay within it. Though it is largely accepted that our perception of creative elements is greatly influenced by presentation and communicated modes of contextualization, the inherent language of display spaces at times remains uninspected. Instead the usual tendency is to project meaning-making constructions onto walls, whereby architectural autonomy is overlooked in favour of treating space as a tacit, pliable entity.

At times, galleries morph into infotainment islands where every turn gives one a sense of being ‘elsewhere.’ While the spatial design works toward bubble-like dislocation, didactic text serves to train on how to engage and absorb the display. Alternatively, this scenario is paralleled by radical initiatives in which spatial cognition and art display function through syncretism.

In relation to the PEERS residency, studio spaces could be treated as intangible archives that hold the essence of the art-making process.

It is these inhabited zones that have been in perpetual conversation with artists, transforming regularly and hence, remaining in a state of flux. The studio acquires ambiguous contours as it becomes a site for mental reflection, creative preparation, storage and display.

Over the month a symbiotic connect has been sustained between artists and their incubatory abodes – walls became dynamic collaborators as they were used as surfaces for erratic sketching, sticking time-tables, pasting forms and indulging in experimental stints. On open day, from a self-reflexive dimensionality the studio space begins to make way for external critical discourse, as artists create an environment wherein symbolic vocabularies may be conveyed effectively. The intention is not to merely exhibit, but to extend an invitation for continued interaction.

Pratik Sagar completed his BFA and MFA in Paint-

ing from the College of Art, Delhi in 2009. He was awarded the M.F. Hussain award by the College of Art in the same year. His drawings were recently selected for the 2nd Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing Exhibition. In 2005, he participated in an Exhibition of paintings organized by International Council For Red Cross in collaboration with the Swiss Embassy. Pratik has produced several temporary installation works at the Fine Arts department, M.S. University, Baroda and nearby areas.

While his early works surround the politics of the personal realm, his recent art incorporates ‘live action’ as inexpensive, everyday materials are used to reveal challenging perspectives on life and society.

His art is often self-destructive and through an invitation for public interaction it obliquely comments on societal phenomena and human instinct. He uses textual content to engage the viewer and/or passerby while weaving in visual and spoken clichés to question stereotypical patterns of social behaviour. There is spontaneity and openness in his approach as he is able to observe his work re-invent and decompose itself – change always being the only constant.

In a continued quest to observe the metamorphosis of textual symbols through juxtaposition with organic matter; during the PEERS residency, Pratik carried out site-specific public actions in different parts of Delhi. By contextualizing disjunction between recognized meanings of words and their visual representation, he observes life elements interact and unravel his work. In Eat Me, his performative actions are temporal offerings that rely on participation at various levels, as the spirit of collaboration is intrinsic to the process. Through meticulous documentation the artist has sought to confront hierarchical perceptions by revealing the irony embodied within subjective forms. The act of feeding works at multiple levels – firstly, as offering meant to satiate physiological need but more significantly as a semantic probing employing the conscious inculcation of meaning. The works eventually create a sense of physical void yet render a perceived aura of self-consumption.

Reality is not a stagnant pool but a rushing stream; a current. There is no being, only a becoming.

Construction and destruction, both these factors are never at rest. The rising of one ripple depends upon the plummeting of another. Thus, the current flows on. Impermanence is not a philosophical dogma but a fact, which we feel and experience so very strongly in our everyday life.

All my works either invite deconstruction or posses a tendency toward self destruction, which is reinforced in terms of choice of material, text and its usage. Engaging with nature and its varied living species, I find my expression becoming more trust-based and convincing which is where it transforms from subjectivity into a more objective creation. These works often refrain from arriving at a conclusion as they deal with inherent contradictions of thoughts within diverse contexts. While harnessing the participation of living beings, time, organic and inorganic matter, I urge the viewer to consider the ever-changing nature of life.

Political agendas, fake promise, irresponsibility, terror attacks and the blame game have affected me and have taken my attention towards use of uselessness and an urge for hope. The attraction and use of this “uselessness� is the theme for these works. Denial of helplessness is the aesthetic of my expression. Also the emotion of love has been celebrated and promoted. Love and humour have been seen as potential weapons against the evil.

Eat me‌. deals with the implementation of knowledge and our sense of perception. There is always a contradiction between what we have been taught as definition, meaning for words or emotions and the authentic practical meaning that is experienced. There also exists an alternative field of facts, information and knowledge systems that run parallel to our individual experiential truths.

By creating a word with edible content I have attempted to attract living organisms to interact with my work. Sometimes to construct and highlight the visibility of the word claiming its existence, on other occasions the word has been deconstructed or it remains untouched, unchanged; either way the process of this happening becomes the narrative.

Shine P. Shivan has completed his BFA from Delhi Col-

lege of Art and has a Masters degree in Visual Arts from Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Agra. He was awarded a scholarship by Lalit Kala Akademi in 2008 and also participated in the 49th and 50th National Art Exhibitions organized by the Lalit Kala Akademi. Shine was selected for All India Camlin Art foundation’s Euro Art tour in 2007.

The artist has experience in set design, and has interned with Zuleikha Chaudhari and Manish Chaudhari on their production, On Seeing The 100 Per Cent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning.

Over the years he has moved from canvas works to embrace a more composite practice including sculpture, installation and most recently performance based techniques. Intricately designed and layered with coded gestures his art-work delves into the darker depths of the human psyche. Collection and Preservation are crucial to his creative sensibility – as locally sourced natural materials bear a strong influence on his forms. He also deploys found articles like industrial waste, and textiles to scrutinize the realm of the absurd and present incisive projections on obsession, death and cruelty.

Shine’s studio has been a relentlessly changing environment, he uses the walls as temporal canvases, and treats the space as a personal laboratory where characters are introduced, blended and altered. He has been consciously working toward distorting the dimensions of the room and brining in elements from the external surrounding into the interiors, thereby unravelling notions that impose rigidity of purpose and fixity to a lived space.

His work, Second Hand Spin appears as psychosocial reflection on the circulation of used objects. Each piece is given a distinct life as this artist purposefully blurs ontological boundaries between a work of art and commodity.

Though there is a strong fantasy element instilled in the characterization of forms, they also serve as contemplations on consumerism and dynamics of global markets, when observed as evocative studies on the carcass of cultural material.

Through a play with surface textures, Shine ponders over the nature of mortality; while there are strong references to corporeal decay in this art-work, there is also an exploration of erotic imagery and fertility symbolism that hints at the continuation of the cycle of creation.

The body transforms from flesh into a transmitter of stories that tell you how to experience it, look at it and what to do with it. There is then a multiplicity of bodies, gaining existence as animated flesh; being re-cast through movement and conveyed plenitude. The body may also be compared to a temporary shelter which acts as a conservator of the spirit.

I employ creative devices to engage in image building that plays out as an assemblage of personal and social worlds. I’m interested in looking at ‘the old’ and ‘the used object’ to study its circulation, reinvention and reinterpretation in society by deploying a multidisciplinary, cross-cultural approach.

As Rousseau said ‘...What he really is, is nothing; what he appears to be is everything for him’ - in my work second-hand objects are rendered surface exaggerations and they come alive to act as intermediary forms which facilitate the invention of many selves. The wearing of second-hand clothing is perceived as a re-visiting of past(s) and the revealing of inherent histories. It does not represent fixed time but rather a sense of fluid timelessness and universality. As per Asian cultural beliefs clothes carry the essence of the deceased, and are hence honoured as tactile remnants of the personal self. I have contextualised this traditional knowledge to weave multifarious narratives around second-hand garments and identity formation.

Second-hand garments have an incongruous history but if traced back to the Bohemian aesthetics of 19th century Europe and across counter-culture movements, wearing second-hand has consistently been observed as a marker of cultural identity. It has also been noted that along with claims of charity and commerce, the second hand object ‘binds the world’s richest and poorest people in accidental intimacy.’ The politics of used materials is about unequal circuits; often what is discarded by richer nations travels as ‘excess baggage’ to poorer counterparts. Second-hand Spin thus, also actively conveys the detritus of culture and nuances of cruelty that lay bare the unsettling association of ‘the discarded’ with poverty, death and displacement.

Further, my artistic interventions deal with the language of space as I unravel perceived fixities and alter spectatorial perspectives by disassembling architectonic dimensions through the use of Radium-based paint. This act is meant to accentuate invisible dimensionalities - the undersides of a space. A theatrical space is created where spectacle and spectator blend together surmounting to an ethos of universal festival.

Kriti Gupta has completed her BFA and MFA in Painting from M.S. University, Baroda. In 2008, she organised a workshop with students of Amalsad College of Fine Arts on ‘Portraits and Identity-New Modes of Portrait Painting.’ Her initial experiments with texture and pattern in paper works eventually led to the juxtaposition of functional objects with the canvas. These pieces play with dimensionality and appear to converse with the artist’s physically inhabited spaces. Kriti’s recent work involves the incorporation of traditional community-based processes in contemporary installations.

Her engagement with indigenous knowledge raises debates with various aspects of urban living and built structures within the metropolis.

The question of home is one that has recurred in Kriti’s art practice. Her Peers project has emerged from shared conversations with women living around Khirki village and her own experience of residing in the city. As a dense migrant pocket, the neighbourhood around KHOJ Studios has a fluctuating demography, and living spaces are being constantly vacated, torn-down and rebuilt. The prevailing social environment has critically influenced the artist’s creative sensibility. In the sound installation, personal narratives on ties to family and habitat unfold as a shared aural experience and the physical structure conveys the fragility and instability of the surroundings. While the urban home remains an obvious reality, the yearning for momentary escape to physical and intangible sites of origin - maternal homes, reconnecting with joint family, re-living childhood memories is continually reiterated. The installation works toward accessing shared memories as the vacant space within the structure, allows one to freely engage with the visuals that the acoustic dimension creates in the mind.

Kriti’s work process has been physically intensive as she works toward creating experiential environments by interacting with her medium in a gestural manner. She layers her canvas with charcoal and organic colour in a language that resonates with the practice of refurbishing walls of ‘handbuilt’ homes.

‘Aaj Khirkee Main Barf Padi’ A Public Art Project at Khoj, Delhi, 2009 My project with KHOJ emerged out of a dialogical process, shared visions and experiences. It involved interactions with women about issues and questions relevant to their lives using the politics of local knowledge; resulting in a practice that shifts the understanding of art-making as a process rather than it being restricted to an object alone.

‘Aaj Khirkee Main Barf Padi’ is a sound piece achieved by installing sound recordings within a paper structure which is 7x7x6 ft. in dimensions. The work came about as a confluence of my experiences and visuals of Delhi and its living spaces. I grew interested in how the migrant community in and around Khirkee area (where KHOJ Studios is located) deals with congested, concrete living spaces. For this I interviewed a few women, who spent most of their time at home. Our conversations were woven around tales of maternal homes and narratives of youth.

The conversations can be heard from the peepholes made on three sides of the room allowing the viewer a certain closeness / intimacy with the process yet maintaining a sense of spatial detachment. The room is lit from within and has white interior walls, standing in contrast to the outside alley which is left comparatively dark.

My intention of working with this idea was not to produce a finished art-piece by the end of the PEERS residency but to initiate a dialogue for a larger archive. Therefore, the paper room was conceived as a means to display the sound piece appropriate to that environment. I call the room ‘White Wash’ since its non-suggestive white interior walls allow the viewer to draw over it his/her own imagination whilst listening to the conversations.

Aliya Pabani has pursued undergraduate education in Liberal Arts at McGill university in Montreal, Canada and is currently studying at CEMA (Centre for Experimental Media Arts) at Srishti College of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru. In 2009, the artist displayed a Video Installation at the Institute for Advanced Media Art and Sciences (IAMAS) Graduation Show in Ogaki, Japan. Her work does not rest comfortably within art jargon brackets such as community based art, new media art, etc as her projects play out as social experimentation and public interventions that investigate community rituals, cultural behaviour, and the impact of state powered hierarchical structures on individual freedom.

Her actions are often covert and hence, the degrees of public participation vary and responses come to be used for further research on specific socio-political questions.

Digital tools are employed as self-extensions to record and test levels of public tolerance and the inclusiveness of urban systems. Simultaneously, modes of mass media are parodied while looking into methods of surveillance, racial stereotyping, gender violence, etc.

Aliya’s PEERS project has been a personal investigation surrounding the social politics and cultural implications of the Delhi MRTS. By borrowing excessively from the structural vocabularies and social mannerisms of major subway systems across the world, the Metro project adds to the manufacturing of a generic global image of the capital city. The artist has made parallel realities evident by drawing upon cultural cross-linkages and visiblizing state processes that work towards standardization of cultural behaviour.

The construction of public fear and enforcement of high security solutions are the other factors that have been scrutinized by the artist. She explores how the authorities’ attempts to create a safe travel environment, could impinge on personal freedom through surveillance, extensive social regulation and suspicion based other-ing.

Aliya has collected and commented on freely circulated public material and by using a hidden camera in the Metro environment she has chronicled commuter’s reactions to ‘suspicious objects’ and ‘unusual behaviour’.

My work falls on the assumption that institutions1 are created through the various interactions of people and space over a given time period. In the course of time, physical structures are developed to direct public movements, legislation is passed to define a range of behaviour, and monitoring systems are put into place to ensure that we are aware of our own behaviour(s) and those of others. I am interested in the implicit or covert elements that emerge from the series of interactions that shape a given institutional system.

The process is a form of research.

One that borrows from research practices in an array of disciplines (critical social, design, art etc.) and does not limit its scope to a particular hypothesis. It begins with a certain topical issue of social import, and an objective or scope that delimits the range of possible actions.

Metaphors are attributed to social systems to develop a mode of inquiry.

If objects are composed of small systems that are not obvious to our everyday perception, then why not ascribe objects to larger systems that lie similarly beyond our perceptual range?

The media employed become supplementary to the research process.

How can media be used to amplify, scrutinize or record a node in these systems? The media that we interact with and through on a daily basis become extensions of our natural capabilities. I am concerned with capturing our daily experiences, through these additional organs.

The body as a human security camera.

Signs as carriers of memetic information.

The medium becomes the vehicle through which these systems are re-presented, often through fragments of documentation (images, objects, video etc.) that encourage an open reading in a way that often seems incongruous with their form.

The term may be used in a social structural sense to signify an organization founded for a religious, educational or social purpose, but in a behavioural sense, it can also signify an established practice or custom.

1

Waribam Dorendra has been trained in Film and video editing at the Jyoti Chitraban Film and Television institute in Guwahati, Assam. He is also a working member of the Desire Machine Collective, a new media group based in Guwahati. He was selected for the 4th Talent Campus India, 2007 organized by Osian Cinefan in Delhi.

His short film Temper places the individual protagonist at the core, and surrounding elements are harnessed to explore an inherent mood and the undulating terrain of his mindscape. Harsh external realities are subverted through a surreal audio track placed upon a non-linear visual structure.

The mise-en-scene is filled with dialectic disruptions as inner fragility is revealed through an explosive human portrait. Mejaaz was screened at the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) and VIBGYOR film festival in Kerala in 2008.

Dorendra’s film, Adapt/Adopt – 4 is a poetic documentation of changing views in static frames juxtaposed to convey a dreamlike visual narrative.

The camera looks onto everyday scenes as a contemplative spectator, drawing on the essence of life’s reverberations. The work also seems to speak of loneliness and the spirit of imaginative flight.

The second film made during the PEERS residency – A Brief Companion In A Capital City is a weave of conversations carried out over the 4-weeks spent in Delhi. It is a personal contouring of stories on urban migration and the dynamics of changing identities.

THOUGHT Process...

Brief Companion In A Capital City Me I stand afar and soak in the landscape of a city or of a small town; my heart wants to see beyond... that which remains unseen and unknown; then a chilling melancholy fills my heart. Heaviness sets in as I know it’s already time to leave. Life, I don’t want to go ahead as I know I will once again briefly leave another companion.

Do we all seek a companion? To make the journey while carrying someone’s memory along may seem burdensome but there is a lightness in going far which sends me shooting to the edge of the horizon. Sadness is felt for the distance which I cannot fill. So many memories attached; so many memories unheard - we go a long way in this journey called life. Instead of carrying whole memories I take with me a thin string of emotions which become part of my breath.

To move or to stay….

Journey A journey has purpose but sometimes the intended rationale is left behind and we become mere particles, swept away by the torrents of the journey itself, discovering new purposes and logics.

Politics We follow a pattern of self analysis which grows larger to encompass our national identity yet at the same time it is as minute as our individual identity. When I return home, after being away for a while, I begin to think over the history of journeys - it seems humanity has always moved toward safer havens and secure livelihood.

4 Window….…Aeroplanes....Playground….Garden - First sight of amazement and play...

One day my eyes opened very early in the morning. Through the window ahead of me, I saw an aeroplane flying in the distance moving from one corner of to the other... I felt like a child who is continually amazed by the sights of the world and playfully learns to live life.

Some dreams are memory - I see things and they are stored as memories; I don’t know exactly when this memory becomes dream...

Thought PROCESS… I bought a video camera at the beginning of my residency and began to practise with it, recording my surroundings and the people I encountered.

My video “Brief Companion in a Capital City” is an attempt to know how (or how easily) people adapt to a new place. I wanted to move with them and begin a dialogue through companionship.

My other work “4” is a video about observation of sight and sound shot across four different locations in Delhi. As a recording the video can be a process of accumulating knowledge for thought or simply give an impression of a place for a certain time.

Critic in Residence

Natasha Ginwala is a Post-Graduate student at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. In 2008, she was part of the curatorial team for the exhibition ‘Where in the World’ at the Devi Art Foundation, which showcased artworks from the Lekha and Anupam Poddar collection of contemporary Indian art. Natasha has also completed a Post-graduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai and later worked as assistant director at Red Ice Films, a Mumbai-based Production house.

As emerging art practitioners working in a time when the words ‘Boom and Crash’ have become inescapably linked with art culture and a creative impulse is often selfconsciously fashioned as a consumable luxury product; there are significant challenges for those who wish to take on different paths and voice other concerns; since, the questions Who and How much most often take precedence over What and Why...

Thought maps, artistic processes and essentially the steps that lead to the making of an art-work are neither effectively looked into nor valued. Hence, this student residency became a useful experiment for each of us to examine the creation process and provided the artists in residence an opportunity to instil a sense of collective participation in their individual practice.

As Critic in Residence, I attempted to investigate newer modes of expression and analytical thinking when discussing art and its processes. I began to sense that the effervescence of the creative stimulants around me was constantly leaping beyond the confinement of textual representation. While our conversations were filled with provocative thoughts, refreshing ideas and challenging positions; when I got back to writing, the remnants of those moments seemed dull in comparison to the lived experience. Thus, I began to explore other avenues to convey, comment and critique – my blog, video work, photo-documentation and work-sheets stuck above the dinner table in our guesthouse, became modes of transmission; working as alternatives to voice concerns, share and maintain updates on ongoing residency activities, and capture floating bubbles of conversation.

I used my time at KHOJ to begin exploring the genealogy of spaces created for art-viewing and their connection to social environment. The PEERS Residency has sharpened my interest in facilitating the extension of creative boundaries and surveying the impact of interactive art on civil society.

Remember To Breathe An explorative pursuit that seeks to survey internal resonances of an itinerant mind; by using still images in a fluid manner, I have sought to create layered visuals that speak of penetrating surface realities. The short film is an attempt to link the creative cycle to the breathing process and thus, understand it as a living, regenerative experience. While questions flicker in the subliminal horizon, the mundane is rendered a tactile consciousness.

Thoughts embedded in the discursive imagination are agents of infinite possibility, it is when they are given a tangible birth that a stable identity becomes manifest. Yet this work seeks to convey the rupture in each articulation by addressing dualities that are inherent in the expressed images.

Visual Artist, Paul Klee once said, “We must stop and listen for a response to the world in ourselves. This means becoming intimate with objects, reaching a stage...where we can wait attentively and silently until the essence of their being is revealed.�

When seen through a phenomenological lens, this endeavour seeks to comment on the act of critiquing. It acknowledges the repetitive nature of visual analysis involving the drain-ing of the mental realm to translate thought into propositional modes of meaning-making.

Dilli mein Hum, Hum mein Dilli...

“The city, essentially and semantically, is the place of our meeting with the other”

– Roland Barthes The city is fundamentally layered with multiple dimensionalities and fed by transculturalism as individuals are constantly driven to exist in the presence of other-ness. This experiential otherness does not limit itself to the cognitive sphere; it steers patterns of spatial management and architectonic organization of our built environment.

Although physical realities of the city are mostly plottable, it remains a floating notional entity perpetuating several intangible topographies governed by personal memory, public culture and popular tradition. While the urban jungle engenders multiplicity; paradoxically, it facilitates the erasure of historical specificities by re-structuring cultural taxonomies and dislodging traces of past(s), thereby augmenting social dispossession. As an alienated subject, identity (re)formation thus becomes an interminable project for the urban citizen.

The fragmented self circulates as a sign of urbane predicaments, while the urban panorama retains symbolic stability, the ground beneath is ceaselessly shifting as the chameleon like metropolis reinvents itself from one moment to the next. When envisioned as an ever-changing ecosystem - the city appears as a dynamic organism entwined within the duality of utopia-dystopia; with its citizenry engaged in a perennial attempt toward socio-economic upgradation, and the aspiration to establish a stable ‘home.’ It is here that we find the dreamer and the cynic conflate into an inextricable, dichotomous whole.

Throughout the PEERS residency, Dilli remained an active collaborator in our artistic wanderings and creative engagements. Doren took off with his camera, visually mapping the many faces of Dilli by crosscutting his encounter with the capital and personal narratives on the floating population of the city. By basing her project on the Metro system of Delhi, Aliya explored the city as ‘a state of mind, a body of customs, traditions and organic attitudes.’1 Through engagement with notions of public fear, and the politics of civic insecurity she also raised questions about the impact of surveillance tactics on the citizenry. Pratik’s organic constructions physically corresponded with the public sphere as collective conversations and ephemeral linguistic imprints. Kriti’s project compiled historical narratives of an urban neighbourhood community in a non-linear fashion, by recording myriad voices that spoke of homes – lost and found, abandoned and recovered. Shine scoured popular and obscure corners of the city – second-hand markets, weekend bazaars, book stalls, and more to create composite sculptures that contextualize the city as ‘a site of diversion’.

The city is an embodiment of excess - there is always more than the eyes can see, the ears can hear, the senses can ‘feel’ and the mind can collate. The urban dweller is in

some manner a schizophrenic time-traveller, navigating through vacillating currents of the cityscape that conjoin the ‘Now and Then’ as well as the ‘Here and There.’ As part of this atmosphere of sensory excess we lived, collaborated and created...now we travel on.

1 The City - Robert Ezra Park, Ernest Watson Burgess, Roderick Duncan McKenzie

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Blah blah blah (c) 2009, New Delhi ....

PEERS 2009

The Annual Student Residency at KHOJ Studios

KHOJ International Artists’ Association S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi - 110017 Phone: +91-11-65655874, +91-11-65655873 E-mail: interact@khojworkshop.org