Default Screen

Introduction:

The visual always comes without warning. How do you reject the visual before it parades before you? Why should you reject it? It’s not worthy of attention unless it produces a vision higher than the one that produced it. The whole history of philosophy is a tale of the above sentence. The visual most often runs the show except when the vision supersedes the visual. Infact the visual are productions of visions. They are tangible manifestations of visions made available to our senses, intellect and emotions.

The visuals on display here are meant to produce visions. Quite obviously they are only tools to discover who you are, where you stand and what matters to you and is it really worthy a matter to think about? But then, are you what your opinions are? The visuals are prompts to assist in shifting one’s focus from the everyday to the power of a day.

It is not what you see in the image that really matters, but how strongly it affects the direction of your life and the duration of this shift. Every curatorial work has an agenda to affect either History or the Economy or both, but the success of it is measured by the range and duration of its influence and how well it has managed not be influenced.

Concept:

The visuals are a metaphorical comment on the DNA of cyber- culture. The frames are an imitation of the monitors in business settings. Expect here all the frozen screens reflect the freezing of culture brought about by the internet where the cyber-space is the only culture (though it ought to be called space) that experiences development, like a tornado that consumes all that’s in its way in order to move ahead. This is just one side of the Janus faced screen. What it screens is the pockets of world where time is frozen due to the lack of the web there.

It is the wireless that’s wired here. In a network every image is available in every system. The fact that one can glance at all of them at once that too full screen sizes suggests an advantage over the single screened computer. This aspect hints at the underestimated power that lies outside of the network. Though this power appears to be beyond the human ability to grasp as the eye cannot take in all the images at once, perhaps it is just a flaw in the way of seeing.

As the word suggests, the screen conceals aspects of the network of which it is a product. If we think we have seen something on the screen, a re-evaluation is necessary as it suggests that we have only just touched the border. Only in getting past the border can there be any real experience of the other and hence the potential for exponential growth in a direction that surpasses the borders of human imagination. The beguiling nature of the Janus face often makes it appear like the other when in fact it is always masking it from human perception and imagination. The sensationalism, sensuality, attractions of the screen is meant to distract, to disturb, to ensnare in order to protect what it conceals. That’s what it’s meant for. That’s who it really is!

There always are internal and external warning signals at the border. Borders are regions of conflict, turmoil and inevitably…. death. As it is true historically, even today victory lies in crossing the border. Contrary to most misconceptions, the endeavour here is not to break statutes but to innovatively breakthrough the border in collaboration with the rules. It’s about tact and skill in warfare. The only way to the other size is through the zone of terror.

Nevertheless (or rather hence), the surest way to know what really lies within this space is to look beyond its boundary. A show put up in an institute where the policies, the availability of space, the training or lack of it, the limits and the liberties prevailing determine the production of curatorial work. A show in a city that has no dearth of galleries and studios but where these spaces follow an economic and/or political strategy which excludes what springs up beyond the borders of its criteria, thus aiding in the institutionalization of site specific work. A show in a country that is still coming to terms with the enormous popularity its contemporary artists have gained beyond rather than within its geographic boundary, a space where the nature of art has changed too drastically for native digestion and assimilation.

Note on the Artist:

The Artist’s inclinations towards structures containing well-defined shapes contrasts with the otherwise captured emptiness of the skyscapes, revealing the human tendency to be extremists. The uncertainty that lies within the region of balance causes the artist to oscillate between the edges of the see-saw of situational crisis. The risk factor of the borderline where equilibrium exists is perhaps unconsciously avoided.

The photographer’s rejection of color and affinity for black and white images re-iterates the avoidance of the intensity that exists at the gravitational point where diversity converges. He personifies the general and widespread rebellion of the ideals of The University.

The two homes of the artist, the ancestral and the current are juxtaposed to counteract the diasporic effect of migration. Here is a display of the everyday as against the pilgrimage.

A place of birth and a place of growth entangled in a screened array! (pun intended)

Curatorial Work 1
Neha Jiandani
7th Semester
Art History Dept.
College of Fine Arts, CKP.

17/10/08