Less Than an Image: Public Fabrications in Digital Times

14 January 2020 | New Delhi

Vishal K. Dar’s site-specific projects create iridescent overlays upon diverse kinds of public spaces. The spaces are often abandoned and disused sites, and sometimes well-known landmarks. He uses analogue elements taken from architecture and merges them with evanescent material, such as light, after which he programmes the overlay with diverse digital insertions and hacks. Using Vishal’s work as a launchpad for a larger discussion of spaces known and unknown, the conversation moves over informational covers, data, memory, experience and the logics of navigation.

Vishal K. Dar is an artist and architect whose recent works have been shown in the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, the 11th Shanghai Biennale, the Jawahar Kala Kendra, Alserkal Avenue Dubai and Lulea Biennial.

Ashish Rajadhyaksha is an independent scholar, author of Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (2009), The Last Cultural Mile: An Inquiry into Technology and Governance in India (2011) and other books.

Kaushik Bhaumik is currently an Associate Professor, Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. He has edited Project Cinema City: Bombay/Mumbai (with Madhusree Dutta and Rohan Shivkumar) and Visual Sense: A Cultural Reader (with Elizabeth Edwards). Bhaumik has been programmer at the Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema and has collaborated with Vishal K. Dar on the BrowNation art project.