|  Technology as live vibrance
The multi-media event by Kevin Kelly (1 Shanthi Road Studio/Gallery, April 26 to 29) let one can hope again that exotic India is becoming obsolete.This mid-generation artist and assistant professor of art from Canada responded whole-heartedly to the reality of the country dominated by communication technology. His ‘Airsell’ exhibition took off from the omnipresence of mobile telephonic towers in and around the city. At first glance, the works seemed to act more in terms of a humorous as well as warm gesture of understanding and empathy rather than offer a profound experience. Still, they left a quite holistic and pervasive after-effect underscored by perceptive links with the wider ethos of the place on the grass-roots plane.
The most entertaining and spectacular component here was the racy, amusing video in which hosts of metallic tower grids with their antennas, receivers and such jutted out and jerkily shuttled between the ground and space to the accompaniment of raunchy film music. Somewhere on the edge of the camera real and animation, from the literal and the loud it drew a rough fantasy and poetry, while traces of popular cinema and TV commercials, like in life, coexisted with a sense of vibrant vitality. A connection with human bodies and sensations came through also from the partial graphic blur and rhythm of the computer-manipulated silhouettes.
The works that spoke about softly observing new technology against the changing modest-level traditional existence were the pieces done in collaboration with crafts people _ the black cloth hanging with motifs of towers boldly block-printed on them and the purple silk one embroidered in a more feminine manner with such designs threaded of small, shiny beads.
The most convincing aesthetically were the large, coarse-tender sketches of transmission machinery elements. As though tentative, they played on unfinished charcoal lines, sometimes replaced by shaped made from transparent cello-tape or torn strips of white paper. Through the residues of the realistic and of the nervous hand, there emerged a raw liveliness with an intuition of a forceful but chaotic, perhaps shabbily handled technology as being permeated by the humble yet spirited human condition. | 
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