As If - IV & As If - tV : Landscape Virtual
April 9, 2015 - April 10, 2015
Art Night Thursday
9th April, 2015
Chemould Prescott Road and Clark House Initiative invite you to a discussion of two CAMP shows in the company of the artists.
7:30 - 8:30 pm Chemould Prescott Road
As If - IV Night for Day
8:30 - 10:00 pm Clark House Initiative
As If - tV
A two-part discussion, framed by concepts of the "virtual" and that of the "landscape".
Virtual: that which is not currently existing, an unrecognised plane or facet; out of time, an unseen capacity. But one that is clearly evoked and asked to function in these exhibitions. Landscape: that whose old walls and hierarchies must be cut across, but also which offers material resistance, and layers, which have to be navigated.
The prefix As If in the exhibition titles carries the freedom of association of "as" and the "what if" of concrete and often utopian imaginations. But how to map the responses of artists against the massive mediafication, televisation, networking, and infrastructuring of our social landscape? How has the virtual itself evolved, and is it still useful as a concept? Taking the past century as a frame, this discussion walks us through camera obscuras, street decorations, television, CCTV, and proliferations of networked media from electricity onwards. All of which create their own gaps of sensing and participation, or what Lefebvre called "blind fields". In yet other words, these are the more "virtual" aspects of the past century of cinema.
The first CAMP exhibition in this series was called Rock, Paper, Scissors. It suggested that subjects, technology and authors could be thought of as equally powerful, equally fragile, and could also exchange places. Once we adopt this contemporary play of forces, how do they modify the landscape? Discursively, psychologically, symbolically, physically or otherwise? The discussion tries to address this question.
CAMP
As If - IV Night for Day
Chemould Prescott Road
Ongoing till April 30 2015
Choreographed together, electric, sonic, filmic and other uncategorisable works from 2002 to 2014 that took place in the nighttime worlds of Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, Sharjah, Dakar, Kabul, Mexico and other cities.
'Day for Night' in film is when scenes shown as night are actually shot in the day. The reverse idea promotes night as the imaginative, cinematic and subterranean aspect that undergrids daytime. And that troubles the ‘everyday’ by distributing its energies differently.
CAMP and Pad.ma
As If - tV
Clark House Initiative
Ongoing till May 20 2015
A collection of early projects with and through the medium of television. Also includes a special channel of Pad.ma TV, 24 hours of streamed programming from the online Pad.ma archive.
