Talks

Making Art, Art Making: Process, Polemic, Patronage

11 August 2012

Speakers: Abhishek Hazra, Asim Waqif, Pooja Irrana, Praneet Soi, Aditya Pande, Gigi Scaria, Raqs Media Collective
Moderator: Gayatri Sinha
Discussant: Akansha Rastogi

The panel discussion on the exhibition 'Cynical Love: Life in the Everyday' curated by Gayatri Sinha focused around the broader theme of art making that addresses aspects of process, polemic and patronage. In today’s scenario, where the interface of art and technology is being increasingly explored, artists often use new formats and forms of materiality to highlight the fractured equation between humans, nature and the urban environment. In the talk, the artists addressed the depletion of natural resources, endangered nature, mindless urban expansion and the cynicism that has crept into everyday living. They provided vignettes of a high pressured life, claustrophobic spaces, and cacophonous streets as well as highlighted the use of archiving and cataloguing found footage, photographs and various modes of documentation to cover the shifting social and political ground. Invention and obsolescence are indeed of concern to both technology and art. The talk served to examine as to how contemporary artists deal with various obstacles with regard to how much of the recent art practice has moved out of the once famed ‘artist’s studio’, with art going into other domains. Artists on the panel elaborated upon conceptual and technical processes involved in their art making and also shared how they make sense of their art practice today.