Artalaap

On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani speak to Jayant Parashar about his family's legacy -- a pre-Independence film magazine called Film Pictorial, started in Lahore by his grandfather and great-uncle, RK Parashar and ML Parashar. A well-regarded periodical of the 1940s, Film Pictorial shut down once the brothers moved to Delhi after the 1947 Partition.

We talk about how Jayant came across the magazine, its role -- similar to other high-profile film publications of that era -- as a snapshot of South Asia's urban cinema culture straddling India and Pakistan's Independence as well as the scattershot, digital preservation of lost archives through which we reconstruct and respond to that era.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST HERE:

Jayant Parashar is a Mumbai-based cinematographer and musician. Film Pictorial (1941-1947) was an English-language magazine on Hindustani cinema co-founded and edited by his grandfather and great-uncle in Lahore.

Credits:

Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi

Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma

Production Associate: Priya Thakur

Images courtesyJayant Parashar via Surjit Singh

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar

Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

CONTENTS

0.00-02.30 – Introduction

02.30- 07.40– Discovering a family legacy.

07.40- 15.00 – Back issues of Film Pictorial on the internet.

15.00 - 18.51 – The Parashar brothers and their engagement with the pre-Independence film industry.

18.51 - 27.34 – The wide range of topics the magazine has explored, both serious and light-hearted versus the present day reporting on the film industry.

27.34- 31.37 – Film Pictorial after the Partition, and the value of vintage film magazines in the present.

31.37- 33.28 – How family legacies impact worldviews.

On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani Sharma, speak to artist Pritika Chowdhry, whose solo exhibition 'Unbearable Memories, Unspeakable Histories' featuring her anti-memorials to the Partition is currently on view at the South Asia Institute, Chicago.

We talk about the politics of memorialising the 1947 South Asian Partition, the aesthetic challenge of representing collective trauma and the influence of feminist historiography on understanding the Partition.

We also touch upon drawing parallels with other colonial divisions of territory as well as ongoing civil conflict in the global south, and the limits of testimony in the contemporary period.

You can learn more about the exhibition here:

https://www.saichicago.org/exhibition/pritika-chowdhry-unbearable-memories-unspeakable-histories or at the South Asia Institute, Chicago's Instagram page @southasiainstitute.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-18.

For a time-stamped list of Contents, click here: http:/bit.ly/3CeUTWz

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST HERE:

Pritika Chowdhry is a feminist and postcolonial artist, curator, and writer whose work is in both public and private collections. Chowdhry has exhibited nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the Weisman Art Museum, Queens Museum, Hunterdon Museum, Islip Art Museum, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, DoVA Temporary, Brodsky Center, and Cambridge Art Gallery. Her work has been written up in various scholarly publications, including the journals GeoHumanities, Social Transformations Journal of the Global South, and Progress in Human Geography, in addition to news outlets such as CBS, NBC, and Hindustan Times. She is the recipient of Vilas International Travel Fellowship, Edith and Sinaiko Frank Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts, Wisconsin Arts Board grant, and Minnesota State Arts Board grant. She has presented her studio research projects at various national conferences, such as International Arts Symposium at NYU, The Contested Terrains of Globalization at UC-Irvine, and the South Asian Conference at UW-Madison. Chowdhry holds an MFA in Studio Art and an MA in Visual Culture and Gender Studies from UW-Madison and has taught at Macalester College and the College of Visual Arts. Born and raised in India, Chowdhry is currently based in Chicago.

Credits:

Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi

Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma

Intern: Priya Thakur

Images courtesy Pritika Chowdhry

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar

Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

With two seasons behind us, ARTalaap is taking a hiatus over the summer.

We will be back soon with all-new programming -- stay tuned!

Follow us for updates and information on Instagram at @art.alaap and on Twitter @rtalaap.

You can write to us with feedback, suggestions and requests for guests at: [email protected].

Thank you for your support!

On this episode, I Kamayani speak to Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai whose solo exhibition 'Naguftaha-e-Havva' ('The Unspoken Words of Havva') is currently on view at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai as well as online on the In Touch platform.

https://www.artintouch.in/exhibitions/13-chatterjee-lal-arshi-irshad-ahmadzai-naguftaha-e-havva-the-unspoken-words-of-havva/

We talk about journeying from a small town to a career in the visual arts, the evolution of a distinct figural language, the possibilities of abstraction as an aesthetic mode during a period of repression and Arshi's engagement with time and space in her process-based practice. We also touch upon the use of text as image, the spiritual aspect of art-making, the gendering of material and the abiding influence of Zarina and Nasreen Mohamedi.

Learn about our guest:

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai born in Najibabad, graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts (2011) from Aligarh Muslim University and later pursued a Masters in Fine Arts from Jamia Millia Islamia (2013). She won the Inlaks Fine Art Award in 2019. Working with a range of mediums including painting, printmaking and photography, Ahmadzai’s artistic practice is centred around women. Her knowledge of Urdu, Persian and Arabic allows her to understand the nuances of language, which find their way into her work. She lives and works in Weimar, Germany.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-17

Click here for the time-stamped Contents page: bit.ly/3Ofjmyn

Click here for the English-language transcript:bit.ly/37PeIGT

Credits:

Producer: Varun Kapahi

Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma

Intern: Priya Thakur

Images: Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai; Blueprint 12, New Delhi; Shrine Empire, New Delhi.

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

In this episode, I, Kamayani Sharma speak to the curators of the 4th Kathmandu Triennale titled "2077" -- Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung. They worked alongside Artistic Director Cosmin Costinas to mount the ongoing edition. (originally scheduled for 2020 but deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The Triennale features hundreds of artists from around the world at five venues across Kathmandu.

We talk about the Himalayan cultural zone, modern and contemporary Nepali art, decolonial curatorial approaches and the idea of indigenous worlding through aesthetics. We also touch upon the logistics of organising the Triennale in a multilingual & stratified context, the matter of continued economic support from the West, the need for government funding and the place of South Asia as a "region" in a "global" art configuration.

You can learn more about the Triennale through their social media – @kathmandu.triennale on Instagram and Facebook.

Learn about our guests:

Hit Man Gurung’s works are concerned with some of the most pressing socio-political issues of Nepal, including internal and international mass migration, the legacy of the decade-long Maoist insurgency in the country, as well as the recent pervasive effects of global capitalism in Nepal. Deeply concerned with the impact of these larger forces on individuals, communities, and society at large, Gurung infuses his paintings, documentary photo collages, performance and installation works with political conviction and personal poetry. Gurung participated in major national and international art exhibitions. He is a co-founder of artist collective ArTree Nepal.

Sheelasha Rajbhandari is interested in exploring alternative and plural narratives by learning the value of folktales, folklore, oral histories, mythologies, material culture, performance, and rituals and placing them as evidence, along with references to mainstream history and narratives. Her long term research projects and artistic practice often juxtapose these contradictions and synthesise the knowledge and experiences that result from individual and collective discourses. Through her works, she frequently tries to encounter the simple yet socially forbidden and taboo subject matters, with a focus on women’s struggles, celebrating their resilience. Her works have been a part of major international exhibitions. She is a co-founder of artist collective ArTree Nepal.

Gurung and Rajbhandari have been working collaboratively on multiple projects, including “12 Bishakh - Camp.Hub'' Post Earthquake Community Art Project, in which they were Co-Artistic Directors. They are also co-contributors to several books including ‘Breaking Views’, ‘Absolute Humidity’, a.o.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-16.

Click here for the time-stamped contents.

Credits:

Producer: Varun Kapahi

Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma

Intern: Priya Thakur

Images courtesy Kathmandu Triennale

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

On this episode, it's gonna be just me, ARTalaap creator and yourhost, Kamayani Sharma.

I talk about my work on the cinema of cult Films Division auteur Pramod Pati -- through archival audio footage, clips from Pati's films, original commentary (and joking into the void.)

In light of the Indian government's recent widely-criticised move to merge public film units, I dive into an important moment in the history of the Film Division (FD) through the practice of one of its filmmakers.

I discuss how the sound design of Pramod Pati's experimental shorts, produced by the Indian government at the end of the 1960s, have a science-fictional quality. This sonic sci-fi is indicative of the futuristic ambitions of the Indian state modernising the mediascape during this era, through the technologies of radio, TV and cinema.

This episode is an adaptation of my essay "Archeology of an Experiment: The sci-fi cinema of Pramod Pati" from the Oct. 2015 issue of 'Studies in South Asian Film and Media' (citation below.)

Learn about the host:

Kamayani Sharma is an independent writer, researcher, podcaster and translator. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Vox, Momus, Aperture, Frieze, The White Review, Art Monthly, ART India and The Caravan. She has contributed to edited volumes including 'South Asian Gothic: Haunted cultures, histories and media' (University of Wales Press, 2021). A Kalpalata Fellow in Visual Culture Writing 2022 for Scroll.in, she was a recipient of the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation: TAKE On Writing Travel Grant 2015, critic-in-residence at Dharti Arts Residency 2018 and a finalist at the International Awards for Art Criticism 2020. Sharma runs South Asia’s first independent visual culture podcast ARTalaap.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-15

Credits:

Producer: Varun Kapahi

Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma

Intern: Priya Thakur

Images: Films Division

Special thanks: Amol Ranjan

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

ORIGINAL ESSAY:

Sharma, Kamayani, Archeology of an experiment: The science-fiction cinema of Pramod Pati, October 2015, Studies in South Asian Film and Media 6(2):147-164.

DOI:10.1386/safm.6.2.147_1f

In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, speak to artist, researcher & educator Ita Mehrotra, author of the graphic book ‘Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection’ (Yoda Press, 2021).On the second anniversary of the incredible protests led by India's Muslim women against the CAA & NRC, in this episode we discuss the role of language in the public sphere, how illustration captures the contemporary differently from lens-based practices and how the graphic serial form allows movement among different registers & types of material. We also talk about mixed media methods of comics-making and how graphic nonfiction can and does function as a text for children & young adults.

Learn about our guest:

Ita Mehrotra is a visual artist, researcher and educator. Her work has been published and exhibited by Zubaan Books, Goethe Institute, AdAstra Comix, Yoda press, Fumetto Festival, The Wire and KHOJ, among others. Her recent graphic book ‘Shaheen Bagh, A Graphic Recollection’ voices moments and memories from the vast anti CAA uprising that spread across India over the winter of 2019 (Yoda Press, 2021).

Ita is currently Director of Artreach India, a not for profit that works at the intersections of art, inclusive education and community development. She has been a recipient of the Arts for Good Fellowship (Singapore Foundation), the Gender Bender Grant (Goethe Institute and Sandbox Collective), Fumetto Festival Apprenticeship Grant (Prohelvetia Swiss Arts Council), Connectors of the Future Fellowship (Swedish Institute) and Negotiating Routes: Art & Ecology Grant (KHOJ Artists Association). Ita was Visiting Faculty, Visual Arts, at Ashoka University in Spring 2021 and has an MPhil from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-14

Credits:

Producer: Abhishek S.

Intern: Priya Thakur

Images courtesy Yoda Press.

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

Contents:

0.14 - 1.54 – Introduction

1.57 - 6.52 – How Ita’s academic engagement influenced her art and the significance of the university campus in political education.

6.53 - 11.43 – The use of various analog and digital media to draw and the process of making the book.

11.43 - 20.31 – Deep listening, responsive drawings, and the play between image and text.

20.32 - 28.28 – Arriving at graphic nonfiction for the documentation of the Shaheen Bagh protests, not as evidence but as an extension of the events.

28.29 - 43.19 – Structuring the book: planning out chapters and storyboarding. Understanding Shaheen Bagh beyond just resistance to CAA-NRC.

43.20 - 52.42 – Space and time on the page vs. screen.

52.43 - 58.45 – The matter of subject-position, collaborative strategies of working and using religious and caste privilege to express solidarity.

58.46 - 1.06.40 – Ita’s work as an arts-based educator and how books shape the politics of the children and young adults in the current moment.

1.06.41 - 1.12.03 – Influences and models as an artist and a comment on the future of the form in India and, more broadly, in South Asia.

In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am inconversation with art historian Aparna Kumar, recipient of the inaugural UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize in 2021 for her dissertation on the Lahore Museum — Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia (UCLA, 2018). We discuss the South Asian museum as a locus of studying Partition through art history, how the work of artist Zarina influenced this dissertation and the violent logistics and rhetorics of dividing civilisational heritage. We touch upon the challenges of cross-border scholarship and how the subcontinent’s contemporary religious nationalisms continue to be reflected in the visual and material archives of its fissures. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-13 A full list of textual references is also available in the Image+ Guide. Meet Our Guest Aparna Kumar is a Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South in the Department of History of Art at University College London. She received her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary South Asian art, twentieth-century partition history, museum studies, and postcolonial theory. Before joining UCL in 2020, Aparna was a Lecturer in Art History at UCLA, and a Curatorial Research Assistant at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Kumar’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Fulbright-Nehru Research Program, the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), the Critical Language Scholarship Program, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation project, Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia, was awarded the inaugural UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize in 2021. Credits: Producer: Abhishek S Intern: Priya Thakur Images: Aparna Kumar Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] Contents: 1.34 - 8.35 – Aparna’s academic journey. 8.36 - 15.56 – Writing on South Asian visual culture through the Partition and the Lahore Museum. 15.57 - 17.17 – How Zarina’s works inspired by the Partition influenced this dissertation. 17.18 - 22.39 – The museum and material archive as a site of conflict and contestation. 22.40 - 27.08 – The “travel itinerary” of Mohenjo Daro’s Priest King and Dancing Girl*. 27.09 - 35.04 – The language used to discuss Partitioned objects. 35.05 - 43.19 – The machinery of the Partition enters the Lahore Museum. 43.20 - 45.32 – The problem of the border and the “regional” as an analytic. 46.34 - 50.02 – The problem of cross-border access for South Asian scholars. 50.03 - 55.07 – Scholars whose work made possible and informed this dissertation (listed in References). 55.08-1.01.18 – Contemporary hypernationalism and its effects on culture: the case of India’s National Museum and the Central Vista Project. 1.01.19-1.07.43 – The return of the Priest-King to Pakistan: what does repatriation mean in the subcontinental context?

In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with artist Prabhakar Pachpute, among the winners of the Artes Mundi Prize 2020 about his artistry and engagement with coal mining in his native Chandrapur District, Maharashtra. Pachpute "works in an array of mediums and materials including drawing, light, stopmotion animations, sound and sculptural forms. His use of charcoal has a direct connection to his subject matter and familial roots, coal mines and coal miners."

We discuss highlights from 10 years of Prabhakar's practice including recent shifts therein, his formative years as a young artist at Mumbai's Clark House Initiative and how the aesthetic mode he adopted captures the political and ecological aspects of mining in the era of extractive capitalism (disguised as "development"). We also talk about frequent comparisons with South African artist William Kentridge, inspiration from contemporary artists grappling with history under antagonistic regimes, and the value of artistic research and practice as a collective, peer-driven process.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast:https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-12.

Click here to access the English-language transcript for this episode:https://bit.ly/37HrjIB

Credits:

Producer: Tunak Teas

Intern: Priya Thakur

Translation and transcription: Akansha Naredy & Priya Thakur

Images: Experimenter & Artes Mundi 9

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar.

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

References:

Manik 'Grace' Godghate, 'Ti GeliTehvaRimjhim', Chandramaadhaviche Pradesh, 1977.

Lajja Shah, 'The Wall Street Journal', ART India, pp. 87-89, Vol. 20, Issue 3, 2017.

Ana Bilbao, 'Mining Colombian contemporary art: histories, scales and techniques of gold extraction', Burlington Contemporary, May 2019.

Kathryn Yusoff, 'Mine as Paradigm', e-flux, June 2021.

In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Jyoti Nisha,filmmaker, writer and scholar. She is the director of 'BR Ambedkar: Now And Then', a widely anticipated, partially-crowdfunded documentary that is now readying for release. In her essay, ‘Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship’ [Economic & Political Weekly, May 2020], she theorised about the politics of the gaze from her perspective as a Dalit woman viewer and media researcher. Jyoti was Director’s Assistant on Neeraj Ghaywan's Geeli Pucchi [Dharma Productions, 2021], a short that was part of the Netflix anthology, Ajeeb Dastaans. We discuss growing up as a young woman in UP of the 1990s and 2000s, how Jyoti came to filmmaking via journalism, screenwriting and academia, working on - of all things! - a Dharma movie and her journey, artistic and logistical, towards the completion of her upcoming documentary 'BR Ambedkar: Now and Then'. By way of Jyoti’s own essay, African-American film history and the polemical theories of the documentarian Trinh T. Minh-ha, we unpack the idea of the oppositional bahujan gaze unto Indian cinema and the complicated question of how realism in Indian cinema is part of a Brahmanical aesthetic scheme.

Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast:https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-11.

Credits:

Producer: Tunak Teas

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Images: Jyoti Nisha

Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

References: Jyoti Nisha,'Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, Issue No. 20, 16 May, 2020

bell hooks, 'The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Representation',Black Looks:Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, 'The Totalizing Quest of Meaning', When The Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Politics, Routledge: London, New York, 1991.

Yashica Dutt, Coming Out As Dalit, Aleph Book Company, 2019.