As If - I Rock, Paper, Scissors
Jan. 7, 2015 - Jan. 15, 2015
EXPERIMENTER, Kolkata
January 7 - February 10 2015
An old game of hand-commanded powers:
Jan, Ken, Pon
Mushti, Pataka, Kartarimukha
An interplay of forces in which the roles of Subject, Medium and Author can be exchanged, and also changed.
Three Early Works
In three early works, the roles of subject, medium and author are already rearranged. They struggle with each other on an equal plane. In a sculptural work, video is seen as a physical force disturbing and seducing subjects. Next to this, a collaboration unfolds in a large mall, in which security people, members of the public and 208 cameras are participants. A third work jujitsus television sets, CCTV and neighbours to reconfigure space, speech and hierarchy in a Delhi neighbourhood.
These are formative works by members of CAMP. Windscreen is from 2002, and has never been recreated. It renders video as a physical force, as well as lure and trap. Capital Circus consists of actions followed by 208 CCTV cameras inside the largest mall in Europe, in the city centre of Manchester in 2008. This reworking of the roles of camera operators, publics and CCTV itself yields recordings which are here edited into a film, exhibited recently at the MoMA, Anthology Film Archives and Flaherty Seminar New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Khirkeeyaan took place in the Khirkee neighbourhood of Delhi in 2006, during a residency at Khoj. It involved near and far neighbours talking to each other over household, shop and factory-basement television sets. Khirkeeyaan was part of a historical survey of artists interventions into broadcasting at the AV Festival in 2008 and has been shown at the Power Plant Toronto, Frankfurt Kunstverein, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Dusseldorf, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Oslo, Cornerhouse Manchester, Hatton Gallery Newcastle, Sarai Delhi etc, and was recently part of Tales from the Networked Neighbourhood: The Cinema of CAMP with Filmmaker Festival, Milan.
As If (I - IV)
CAMP
As If (I - IV)
As If is the title of a series of exhibitions by CAMP in early 2015. Retrospective in spirit, these shows gather for the first time in solo exhibition form, many of the artworks and ideas crafted by CAMP as a group since 2007, and by its constituent individuals since 2002.
“In expressions like Kelucharan as Radha, TV as a Fireplace or Seeing it as a Rabbit, we see the key role of the small word as. As carries mimesis, metaphor, selection, or adaptation – so many of the classic powers of art. As If is riskier, more tensile. It reaches for things that have receded from the senses, or that are 'so close, yet so far'. Or that can be thought of and said, but not easily done. As If suggests semblance, structures and desires stretched in both directions: more unlikely, more utopian, but also more concrete, more realised. As If is a two-way bridge between imagination and intimacy.” – CAMP
CAMP is a collaborative studio founded in Bombay in 2007. It has been producing fundamental new work in video and film, electronic media, and public art forms, in a practice characterised by a hand-dirtying, non-alienated relation to technology. CAMP's projects have entered many modern social and technical assemblies: energy, communication and surveillance systems, neighbourhoods, ships, archives – things much larger than itself. These are shown as not having a fixed function or destiny, making them both a medium and stage for artistic activity.
CAMP’s work has been shown in venues such as Khoj, Sarai, Lalit Kala Akademi and NGMA New Delhi, MoMA and New Museum New York, Serpentine Galleries and Gasworks London, Ars Electronica Linz, HKW Berlin, MoMA Warsaw, Askhal Alwan Beirut, Experimenter Kolkata and Documenta 13 Kassel; in the streets and markets of Bangalore, San Jose, Dakar, Mexico City, East Jerusalem, Delhi and Bombay; in the biennials of Shanghai, Sharjah, Gwangju, Taipei, Singapore, Liverpool and Kochi-Muziris; at film venues such as the AV Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Viennale, Flaherty Seminar, Anthology Film Archives, and CAMP’s own rooftop cinema. From their home base in Chuim village, they co-host the online archives Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma, among other long-duree activities.
As If I-IV is a survey of CAMP’s unique work and working methods, in a series of exhibitions across Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai
