From Inner Demons to Demolitions: Gallery Espace Explores Life-Altering Issues in Video Art by four young women artists with Video Wednesday On August 27 August 27, 2008

New Delhi: After the successful launch of its path-breaking art presentation on video art last month, Gallery Espace now presents the second edition of VIDEO WEDNESDAY on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 as part of its innovative ‘Reach Out’ programme at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “This unique project aims to reach out to the local communities and engage them with cutting edge new media art. As a gallery that promotes modern, contemporary and cutting edge art, we take this opportunity to exclusively focus on video art. ‘Video Wednesday’ will showcase work of four contemporary Indian video artists on the last Wednesday of every month. Devised by the expert team of Gallery Espace, Video Wednesday also includes active participation of eminent artists, curators, critics and consultants. By the end of twelve such programs, a well documented book will be published on the video works and the artists who have already participated in this programme.”

Gallery Espace also strives to make each presentation unique for the viewer. For instance, if the debut presentation last month showcased works of male video artists (Tushar Joag, Ranbir Kaleka, Vishal Dar and Gigi Scaria), the four contemporary video artists whose work will be showcased during the forthcoming ‘Video Wednesday’ on August 27 are women - Hemali Bhuta, Koumudi Patil, Rohini Devasher and Sharmila Samant.

Hemali Bhuta’s The Movement, a 5-minute video, is a documentation of an installation. It talks about the movement of forms floating in space. A form - that of a mere rubber-band, a mundane object - could be observed as and translated into a work of art. The horizontals and the verticals, like the warp and the weft, take us through an adventurous roller-coaster ride into a woven sea of patterns, changing due to the overlapping layers. The curtain of the undercurrent movement, partially visible, reveals itself at times, as though playing hide-and-seek, creating a sense of mystery. It showcases buoyancy, a contradiction that of gravity and against gravity; at the same time, it also gives a sense of weight.

Says Hemali Bhuta: “This work intends to take one on a personal voyage of thoughts and forms. The sound in the background, of the vehicles of the sea, tempts you to swim deeper into the sea in search of their existence. One rolls into this current, feeling its own presence manifested in these light weighted rubbers, as though heavy bodies filled with space, floating on the bed of the space. This work is basically a narration, a process of one multiplying into many, of reproduction, of fertility, of communion. Further, it questions the importance of each in a crowd and about the life of a rubber-band.”

Koumudi Patil’s Breathing In - Breathing Out, a 5-minute, 9-second black & white experimental video with sound, is an abstract experiential work that has been visualised more as a meditative painting than as a motion picture. The work is a fusion of an abstract imagery that has been juxtaposed with a ‘found’ voice over of the breathing technique of Pranayama from the classes of the Yoga teacher- Eoen Finn. The video, expresses the mutually existing principles of life (breathing in & breathing out) and death (not breathing in & not breathing out) through the disjunction of the black visuals against the serene sound of Pranayama (breathing technique)

Explains Koumudi Patil: “The work is inspired from my confession of the guilt of the death of two birds through my hands. Through the 9 months of shooting and simultaneous editing of my frenzied eyes that represented the birds, my work gradually transformed into a silent acceptance of the continual strife between sustenance and destruction in life. I have shot and performed for this video at the same time. The process required me to observe my own body as an object of performance to be viewed and captured in a frame without forgetting the emotions and guilt attached to it from the past. The work aspires to communicate a meditative feeling concluding in a haiku that essentially life is all about breathing in and breathing out.”
Rohini Devasher’s Ghosts in the Machine explores the generative possibilities of video feedback. Video feedback is capable of a wealth of complex imagery all of which is created by pointing a DV camera at its own output on a TV screen. The images formed within this feedback loop are fantastic plant structures, tree forms, bacteria, fractal snowflakes, mimic biological life. They are not imposed from the outside in any way and are thus ghosts within the machine.

Constructed of 165 individual layers of video, Ghosts.. charts a journey of artificial evolution. The basic structures and forms are generated from initially random processes via video feedback. These are then layered to construct a slowly evolving composite form that increases in morphological complexity, offering insights into the intricacy lurking within nature's processes.

Sharmila Samant’s Shanghai Tales, 2006, a 13-minute video, is a dramatization of actual accounts, narrated by children affected by the demolitions. Says Sharmila Samat: “Unfortunately, the Mumbai metropolis aims at transforming itself into a Singapore or Shanghai through grand mega city projects for improving infrastructure. The almost daily migration of people into Mumbai has also led to over-crowding, and the civic body is unable to provide basic infrastructure leading to proliferation of slums. 3.5 million slum inhabitants occupy 8,000 acres of land which means that two out of every five slum dwellers lives in an area with a density of 400 persons per acre. An estimated 55% of the city population lives in slums on just 11% of the city’s land.”

Sharmila further explains that a balanced approach to urban development remains an ‘abandoned’ agenda. From November 2004 onwards, Mumbai has witnessed the most brutal and violent slum demolitions on a massive scale. More than 90,000 hutments have been razed to the ground, of which around 60% of the people had names included in the voters’ list. Taking an average of two children per household, around 1,80,000 children are rendered homeless, around 64% of these are out of school, insecure and vulnerable, succumbing to extreme climatic conditions.”

Contemporary Indian Art has reached international heights in the recent years. The international art market is looking towards India for the new and cutting edge art. Many contemporary Indian artists have already been doing cutting edge new media art for the last few years. However, apart from the exhibition projects, no concerted effort has been taken by any gallery to showcase exclusive video projects and make it reach out to the common art loving public in the city. Video Wednesday in this sense, has proved to be a path breaker towards reaching out the common with cutting edge new media art.

The Reach Out program of the gallery includes, apart from involving local communities and art students with the new media art, instituting awards for upcoming art talents, documentation and library for public reference.