AI Website CreatorInvocation is a celebration in silence of the vitalism of the physical world through observations that dissolve the physical, mental and emotional individual self into larger and more potent entities. It also explores the links Assam had with Tibet several hundred years ago, by referring to Vrindavani Vastra, the famous textile piece designed by the Assamese 16th century social reformer Srimanta Sankardev.
The work was commissioned by the British Museum and presented in 2015 as part of the exhibition Krishna in the Garden of Assam, curated by Richard T. Blurton.
A poetic representation of ‘uneven geographies’ and a reflection on the notions of place, space, landscape and nature. The proposed mega dam projects in the region of Northeast India serve as a point of reflection on the relation between power, nature and society. Society is based on the the notion of transformation of the human into labour, of nature into natural resources. The relation between power, ecology and sustainability is tied intrinsically to the transformation of the concept of nature into the concept of natural resources. This has generated a political economy of systematic extraction – mining, deforestation plantation agriculture.
The work premiered as part of the collective's solo show at the ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART PLATFORM NON in Berlin in 2018, an event part of Transmediale and CTM Vorspiel 2018.
Cut The Sky is a meditation on humanity’s frailty in the face of our own actions. In a burnt landscape a group of climate change refugees face yet another extreme weather event. Propelled back and forward in time, they revisit conflict with mining companies, the destruction of fauna and relegation of the marginalised, while contemplating the gift of a human life and the life giving force of the sun. A work in five acts based on the poems written and spoken by Edwin Lee Mulligan, Cut the Sky includes original songs from soul singer Ngaiire, Indigenous songs by the cast and covers from Nick Cave, sung live with thrilling effect by Ngaire Pigram. The set is bare aside from a gas pipeline thrusting up from the floor of the stage. Backstage is hung a huge length of fabric, its folds visible, serving as a screen for projections. The video design encompasses the literal — broad sweeps of country, the devastation after a cyclone — and the poetic. This ambitious multi-dimensional work showcases Marrugeku’s unique contemporary choreography: restless, taut and unwavering.
The world premiere of Cut the Sky was at Perth International Arts Festival in 2015.
Noise Life explores the links between capitalist society and schizophrenia and how human subjectivity and senses have been appropriated by capitalism. It is a sensibility completely colonized by ‘noise’ in a post-industrial sonic environment where sounds of signals, the drones of machines, monotones of media, the racket of financialization, and the gibberish of political speech triumph. Silence and pure sounds have been made obsolete in the roaring atmosphere of polyphony.
The work was commissioned by Max Mueller Bhavan/ Goethe-Institut Mumbai and presented in the collective's solo show at Project 88 Gallery in Mumbai in 2014.
A 39-minute film shot in a redundant thermal power plant on the outskirts of the city of Guwahati, an area surrounded by dense tropical forests and steeped in mythic history, it is a reflection on constructed signs that can never be replicated or remembered, and the relationship between matter and memory.
The work was commissioned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and presented in 2012 as part of the exhibition Being Singular Plural, curated by Sandhini Poddar. It was shown at the first Indian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011, the exhibition titled Everyone Agrees It's About to Explode, curated by Ranjit Hoskote. It traveled to several international exhibitions, amongst which: Indian Highway IV (MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, 2011) & Indian Highway V (MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome, 2011); Intense Proximity, the 3rd edition of the La Triennale de Paris, curated by Okwui Enwezor (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2012).
The work seeks to summon ‘false memories’ of nature via the soundscape of the sacred forest, invoking the idea that on some primordial intro-psychic level we ‘remember’ our earlier existence in any particular location and site, hypothetically once a forest, as natural beings, not of the urban fold. The installation focuses on the dialectics between the soundscape and our memory of that vital, precious and perhaps irretrievably lost space.
The work was shown as part of the exhibition Being Singular Plural, curated by Sandhini Poddar at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
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