As If (I-V)

AS IF  is a series of exhibitions by CAMP across the winter /spring of 2014-15.


As If (I-V) 

As If – I  Rock, Paper, Scissors
EXPERIMENTER, Kolkata
January 7 - February 20  2015

As If – II  Flight of the Black Boxes
24 JORBAGH, New Delhi
January 27 - February 24  2015

As If – III  Country of the Sea
BHAU DHAJI LAD MUSEUM, Mumbai
February 21 - April 7  2015

As If – IV  Night For Day
CHEMOULD PRESCOTT ROAD, Mumbai
March 9 - April 30  2015

As If – tV  
Clark House Initiative, Mumbai
March 29 - May 20  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 archive Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma, among other long-duree activities. 

As If I-V is a survey of CAMP’s unique work and working methods, in a series of exhibitions across Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. More, coming soon. 

As If – I Rock, Paper, Scissors
EXPERIMENTER, Kolkata
January 7 - February 10 2015
In three early works, the roles of subject, medium and author are already rearranged. They struggle with each other on an equal plane. In sculpture, 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.

As If – II Flight of the Black Boxes
24 JORBAGH, New Delhi
January 27 - February 24 2015
Technology’s black boxes are probed and tested. Feelings and strategies develop within and through them. Members of the public enter security, rooms to dialogue with operators. Elsewhere, a single CCTV camera films from the parapets of Palestinian homes, looking over neighbourhoods that have been
broken up into countries. A room camera obscura interrupts the black box of video art with live bodies and trees. The house itself, in a constant state of exhibition and erasure, extrudes changing alphabets in a new work called four-letter film.

As If – III Country of the Sea
DR. BHAU DHAJI LAD MUSEUM, Mumbai
February 21 - April 7 2015
A journey with CAMP’s five-year Wharfage project and related maritime explorations. The city premiere of the widely-travelled film From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf. In other antagonisms: labour deep inside containers, lists arguing with lists, photographs of other photographs, and a wall map titled The Country of the Sea. A counterpoint to both the imperial 'view from the boat'; and to
contemporary metaphors of the 'liquidity' and 'flow' of oceanic and global relations.

As If – IV Night For Day
CHEMOULD PRESCOTT ROAD, Mumbai
March 9 - April 30 2015
Choreographed together, electric, sonic, filmic and other uncharacterisable works from 2002-2014 that took place in the nighttime worlds of Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, Sharjah, Dakar, Kabul 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 undergirds daytime and troubles the 'everyday' by distributing its energies differently.

As If - tV
CLARK HOUSE INITIATIVE, Mumbai
March 29 - May 30 2015
A fifth and surprise show takes place in the intimate setting of Clark House Bombay, in which CAMP members look back at early broadcast experiments and works that revolve around television. Interventions into TV's changing landscape are seen in early projects such as Rustle TV, a utopian TV station inside a market, or WICity TV, programming generated for a 3500-home cable TV channel in Bangalore. Among newer works, a future-facing proposal is made in As-If TV, a 24x7 channel streaming 90-minute edited programs from the Pad.ma online archive.

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Related

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

As If - II Flight of the Black Boxes
Jan. 27, 2015 - Feb. 25, 2015

24 JORBAGH, New Delhi
January 27 - February 24 2015

Born in experimentation and uncertainty, black boxes of machines and institutions surround us with seemingly smooth and impenetrable functions. But reintroduce the uncertainty, reopen the conflicts, and the box appears stable in neither form nor function.

Twelve works by CAMP look out through the interior worlds of cameras, memory devices, surveillance systems and more, developing feelings and strategies along with them.

As If - III Country of the Sea
Feb. 21, 2015 - April 9, 2015
DR. BHAU DHAJI LAD MUSEUM, Mumbai

A journey with CAMP’s five-year Wharfage project and related maritime explorations.

As If - IV Night for Day
March 9, 2015 - April 30, 2015

CHEMOULD PRESCOTT ROAD, Mumbai
March 9 - 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.

As if - tV
March 29, 2015 - May 31, 2015

Clark House Initiative, Mumbai
March 29 to May 30 2015

CAMP and Pad.ma present a series of works on, with and through the medium of TV.

As If - II : A Closing Opening
Feb. 24, 2015 - Feb. 25, 2015

Closing event
As If - II Flight of the Black Boxes

Talk will be from 6:00 pm to 7:30pm
On Tuesday 24th February
at 24, Jorbagh
The exhibition will remain open till 8:30 pm

Do join us for a closing day talk with Ashok Sukumaran of CAMP, and Aastha Chauhan, Shaunak Sen and Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi who will offer responses and questions to parts of the exhibition.

As If - III: View from the Boat (seminar)
March 27, 2015 - March 28, 2015

27 and 28 March 2015

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum and CAMP invite you to a day-long seminar, View from the Boat: a diverse set of responses and discussions provoked by the geography and "approach" of CAMP's ongoing exhibition at the museum, As If - III Country of the Sea.
The seminar will be preceded by an artists’ introduction to the exhibition, starting at 6:00 pm on the 27th evening.
It will commence again on the 28th at 10:30 am and continue till 5:30 pm.
Everyone is welcome to join an after-hours walk through of the exhibition on the 27th of March, starting at 6:00 pm.

As If - III : After-hours walkthrough and screening
March 17, 2015 - March 18, 2015

As If - III Country of the Sea

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Tuesday, March 17 2014

Join us for a walk through, followed by screening of From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf and Q and A.

As If III & IV : Art Night Thursday
March 12, 2015 - March 13, 2015

As If - III Country of the Sea
and
As If - IV Night for day

Join us for a walkthrough, conversation and discussion around the two exhibitions with CAMP and Lawrence Liang.
From 5.30 pm to 7 pm at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum,
and from 7.30 onwards at Chemould Prescott Road.

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.

As If All The Parts Were Slowly Changing
March 20, 2015 - March 21, 2015

Presented by Mohile Parkih Center and Chemould Prescott Road

March 20, 2015

6:30 pm, Chemould Prescott Road

CAMP talks about the mutual development of ideas, collaborations and "encounter strategies" in As If (I- V), their series of ongoing exhibitions across Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. The talk is followed by a walk through of As If - IV Night for Day at Chemould Prescott Road. As If is expanded upon as the title and framing device of these series of shows.



Projects

Wharfage 2022 edition

Evenings at CAMP Rooftop

A roof-top venue that has been active since 2007, in this location since 2009.

Past Present Future

A never-ending project housed at CAMP around peoples histories of Bombay-Mumbai.

The New Medium

The New Medium ​was a curated programme for the Mumbai International Film Festival for three consecutive years (2016-2018). The inaugural program - in a twisted art-historical mode - framed cinema as a new medium (125 years old, when compared to the other arts), and scoured the century of cinema chronologically...

R & R

A space we built and run with others, located in the R and R colony of Lallubhai Compound, Mumbai.

Indiancine.ma

Pad.ma has a sister project.
Indiancine.ma is an annotated online archive of Indian film.

Electronic Ear Cleaning

A project of listening, including with our ears, to some materials that seem to not touch us directly, but make up our "environment".

A Season of Footage and Films


CAMP presents
Saturday or Sunday evening screenings through winter, exploring footage both within and outside the usual capsule of "the film". An experience that could be similar to watching films, or at other times harder to digest, or slower to release, closer to the moment of shooting, less censorious, and less fearful of finitude. Another life, another world of viewing and listening experiences is always possible.

The Edgware Road Project


CAMP is involved in a 2-year "print-from-web" project, linked to its own investigations of the infrastructures of commerce and pleasure in this part of London. As part of the first "block study", we looked at several buildings and their ownership and use histories, and produced a series of tablemats.

The web-based part of the project resides at http://edgwareroad.org. ( now at Print.with.camp ) This website collects materials from various such "studies", conducted by us and others, which then are collaboratively edited and published in a number of physical forms: volumes, pamphlets and placemats. This is an ongoing project, as part of the Serpentine Gallery's Public Program.

CAMP roof

Ashok and Azeer spent some time thinking about and building the CAMP terrace roof structure, built in late 2009. Some of the designs that were sketched out are further below: a big requirement was some retractability, i.e. the ability to have a shading roof in the day but to have it open/ partially open at night, for things like screenings under the stars.

All Projects