Shows
ArtalaapEp 19: Family Archives - 'Film Pictorial' (1941-1947)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...2022-09-2234 min
ArtalaapEp 18: Remembering the Present - The 1947 PartitionOn 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.
2022-08-1958 min
ArtalaapSummer break!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: artalaap.podcast@gmail.com.
Thank you for your support!2022-05-2403 min
ArtalaapEp 17: Tales of SilenceOn 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 te...2022-04-141h 01
ArtalaapEp 16: Indigenous Horizons - The 4th Kathmandu Triennale (2020)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 c...2022-03-231h 07
ArtalaapEp 15: Sarkari Sci-Fi - FD & the films of Pramod PatiOn this episode, it's gonna be just me, ARTalaap creator and your host, 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, p...2022-02-2034 min
ArtalaapEp 14: Imaging Resistance - Shaheen BaghIn 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 child...2022-02-041h 12
ArtalaapEp 13: A Partitioned Memory - The Lahore MuseumIn this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation 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 visu...2022-01-151h 09
ArtalaapEp 12: Char/Coal CountryIn 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 capture...2021-08-131h 29
ArtalaapEp 11: The Bahujan GazeIn 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...2021-07-211h 16
ArtalaapEp 10: Art & Labour - Culture Workers Support TrustIn this episode, I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Shukla Sawant and Annapurna Garimella, Founder Trustees of the Culture Workers Support Trust, an organisation set up in 2019 to and I’m quoting them directly “spread awareness among culture workers about their rights and responsibilities". We discuss the modes and methods by which labour in India's vast culture sector can start to organise and collectivise, how stakeholders across public and private sectors can come together for worker-oriented solutions to entrenched problems and how forms of workplace violence including gender & caste-based harassment (as that embodied by the #MeToo movement in the art...2021-07-031h 11
ArtalaapEp 9: Screenwriting as an Archive of Early Bombay CinemaAs a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Rakesh Sengupta researched early Indian cinema. His essay 'Writing from the Margins of Media: Screenwriting Practice and Discourse During the First Indian Talkies', published in the Dec 2018 issue of Bioscope [no. 9.2] won the Best Journal Article by Screenwriting Research Network and also received High Commendation for Screen's Annette Kuhn Debut Essay Prize. On today's episode, we talk about the way in which the lack of script archives dictated the methods of research, how the vocation of screenwriting propelled fantasies of self-improvement and socioeconomic ascendancy in the 1930s and...2021-06-1659 min
ArtalaapEp 8: Sundance Film Festival 2021 World Cinema Documentary AwardeesAt the Sundance Film Festival 2021, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh won the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change and the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category for their debut feature 'Writing With Fire'. On today’s episode, we discuss the political economy of documentary filmmaking, its practitioners’ love-hate relationship with the state (every government media organisation in India is name-checked in this episode!), the influence and legacy of humanism in nonfiction film and whether its future in South Asia lies in TikTok-type formats.
Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podca...2021-06-011h 08
ArtalaapEp 7: Cognitive - Computational - Cosmic - The 13th Gwangju Biennale (2020)18 May marks a watershed event in South Korea's ultimately successful pro-democracy movement - the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. As we come up on its 41st anniversary, I speak to Natasha Ginwala, co-Artistic Director, alongside Defne Ayas, of the 13th Gwangju Biennale (1 April 2021 - 9 May 2021). Against the backdrop of Gwangju's position as a cultural event with a revolutionary ethos, we unpack the philosophy driving this pandemic edition of the Biennale - notably through the work of Catherine Malabou, Yuk Hui, Maya Indira Ganesh, Djamila Ribeiro and others - and how it is incarnated in the works exhibited and practices platformed. We talk about how...2021-05-161h 17
ArtalaapEp 6: Solidarity Aesthetic - Artists of Myanmar's Civil Disobedience Movement 2021On this episode, against the backdrop of Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement that arose in the wake of the military junta's coup of 1 February 2021, I speak to acclaimed Burmese artist Moe Satt about his performance- and multimedia- based practice. We talk about how visual arts practitioners navigate censorship and restraints on civil liberties. We also discuss the way in which Myanmar's independent cultural organisations like AMCA are engaging in visual activism, how Generation Z and Boomers alike are splitting up across the virtual and actual domains and joining hands against the junta and, indeed, the importance of hands as sy...2021-03-211h 09
ArtalaapEp 5: The Webcomic as Political Form - Part 2This episode is the second in a two-part series on political webcomics in India. In the context of an increasingly repressive regime, the role of allegory, especially in the mode of fantasy and parody, becomes vital. On the Indian Internet, an example is the figure of Rashtraman, a dubious superhero starring in his own webcomic series. I speak to its creator Appupen, a visual artist and musician who tells stories from the mythical dimension called Halahala. Having published several books of graphic fiction, he launched his online comic series with the popular superhero satire 'Rashtraman' and the politically charged ‘Dystopian Time...2021-03-0458 min
ArtalaapEp 4: The Webcomic as Political Form - Part 1This episode is the first of a two-part series on political webcomics in India. In the context of protests, arrests and judicial intimidation of citizens including artists, we take a look at how the graphic strip format is being deployed to respond to political events in India. I speak to Meher Manda and Mayukh Goswami, co-creators of Jamun Ka Ped, an Instagram-based webcomic that since the NRC-CAA protests of 2019, has been chronicling and commenting on the political and social crises raging in India under the Modi administration, including the Indian Supreme Court's verdict regarding the ownership of the mob-demolished Babri Mos...2021-02-1657 min
ArtalaapEp 3: Farming as Art - Artists Against the 2020 Indian Agriculture LawsOn this episode, in the wake of India’s 71st anniversary as a republic, we’ll speak about the farmers’ protests that have been raging across the country for more than two months now in opposition to the three farm laws enacted in September 2020. I speak to Shweta Bhattad, a farmer and visual artist, performer, sculptor and founder member of the Gram Art Project collective, a group of farmers, artists, and other members of the community based in her village of Paradsinga in Madhya Pradesh. With a focus on issues of women’s safety, education and the female body, Shweta w...2021-02-041h 11
ArtalaapEp 2: The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts' Photobook Grantees 2020Photographer Hari Katragadda & writer/editor Shweta Upadhyay were awarded The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts' Photobook Grant 2020 for their collaboration 'I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you'. In this episode, we talk about this award-winning work through its makers' process and influences and the contemporary status of the photobook in India, in the wake of Dayanita Singh's pioneering practice. The route we take winds through discussions of ancient poetry, avant-garde cinema and Gothic marriages.
Click here to access the Image Guide & view the images being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/vi...2021-01-191h 08
ArtalaapEp 1: 10 Years of Kiran Nadar Museum of ArtIndia's first major private museum of modern and contemporary art, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi reopens on 5 January 2021 after a period of closure in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. I speak to Akansha Rastogi, Senior Curator (Exhibitions & Programs), KNMA about a decade of institutional programming, her own curatorial practice within the museum space and of course the stakes and possibilities of the museum as a political and social site in 2020, now 2021, against the backdrop of movements for racial and caste justice and the COVID-19 crisis.
Click here to access the image guide:
https://sites.google.co...2021-01-051h 25
ArtalaapWhat is 'Artalaap' All About?Delve into the discourse around the aesthetics, politics, and infrastructure of visual art. Artalaap is a podcast on visual culture focusing on modern & contemporary art from the South Asian subcontinent. Art critic Kamayani Sharma interviews artists, curators, writers, researchers, arts organisation professionals, and culture workers. Come for the images, stay for the insights!2020-12-2900 min