Magic and Loss by Ragini Bhow | Opens Friday May 16th 2014

Ragini Bhow's work addresses the nature of seeing, illusion, and the human perception of reality. By altering the familiar into the unfamiliar, she is able to traverse an ambiguous space that raises questions on what it means to view nature from the identity of a terrestrial. Her practice explores material relationships that develop from aesthetic observation, visceral exchange, and conversation. Through juxtapositions of man-made elements with the found organic, such as wood and neon light, she transforms the mundane into sacred artifacts that face an alternate dimension.

Ragini completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 2013 with an academic background in Biology. She has been a current resident for 3 months at 1.Shanthiroad.

www.cargocollective.com/raginibhow

PINEAPPLE/SNAKE/ CIRCLE by Benjamin Buchanan I Opens Saturday, 3rd May 2014

Benjamin Buchanan was born in New Plymouth , New Zealand in 1973. He studied Fine Arts at both Dunedin and Auckland University in New Zealand. His practice is engaged with abstraction and pattern making in historical and contemporary terms.

While in India, Buchanan has been inspired by the patterning in everyday culture, from auto decorations to temples. He has amassed a new body of 40 small works on paper and is using these for a large scale temporary installation at 1.Shanthiroad.

Benjamin's residency at 1.Shanthiroad is supported by the Asia-New Zealand Foundation.  

Exhibition of Photographs by KARL DMITRI BISHOP I Opens Monday 21st April 2014 7:30pm

"Looking at other people's pictures can be a very dull affair, even through it shouldn't be. Too many self-titled artists seem to be putting chains and a padlock on their craft; it's safe and it's standardised where it should be all about expression. Karl Dmitri Bishop's pictures on the other hand clearly stand out in contemporary photography, a unique and complex portrait of a world that seems to exist parallel to our reality..." - [No Definition] Magazine

Karl Dmitri Bishop is a London based Photographer/Visual Artist

RELOOK 24: Performing Asia: talk by Rustom Bharucha

Performing "Asia" : This lecture explores the idea of “Asia” that provided the meeting ground of Rabindranath Tagore and Japanese curator and cultural historian Okakura Tenshin at the turn of the last century.  It elaborates on how “Asia” was embodied in their performances worldwide at histrionic and rhetorical levels in their lectures and correspondence. Using rare photographs and audio recordings to highlight the expressive dimensions of performance, the lecture will also focus on the politics of performativity through a critical reading of the inter-Asian tensions underlying an ostensibly pan-Asian discourse. 

In the process, concepts relating to self-Orientalization and the crisis in civilization will be juxtaposed against the leitmotif that runs through the entire lecture – the infinitesimal power of affect which complicates ideological differences, operating at subliminal levels through processes of internalization, forged through intimacies and networks of friendship.  If the idea of “Asia” needs to rejuvenated, it may need to be infused with a new sociality and aesthetics, wherein emergent affective communities connecting individuals across cultures can counter the neo-Orientalist, nationalist, and global associations of Asia in our times.

Rustom Bharucha is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Arts and Aesthetics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.  He is the author of several books including Theatre and the World, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, The Politics of Cultural Practice, Rajasthan: An Oral History, Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin, and the forthcoming Terror and Performance.  A leading exponent of interculturalism, he has conducted workshops and participated in public art projects in India, the Philippines, South Africa and Brazil.  He was the Project Director of Arna-Jharna: The Desert Museum of Rajasthan and the Artistic Director of two inter-Asian festivals devoted to the Ramayana in performance at Adishakti, Pondicherry. 

Ben Rivers talk on " Playback Theatre and Popular Struggle in Occupied Palestine "

Since December 2011, The Freedom Theatre's Freedom Bus has engaged thousands of Palestinians and people from abroad in cultural actions that address Israel’s practice of settler colonialism, military occupation and structural apartheid.  The Freedom Bus partners with village cooperatives, popular struggle committees and grassroots organizations to hold multi-day “solidarity stays” and “freedom rides” in villages, towns, refugee camps and Bedouin communities throughout the occupied West Bank.  These events involve community visits, interactive seminars, guided walks, Hakawati (traditional storytelling), building construction, and protective presence activity.

 A central feature of Freedom Bus events is the use of Playback Theatre. Through this method, a troupe of Palestinian actors and musicians invite stories from the audience and subsequently transform each account into a piece of improvised theatre.  By sharing stories about the realities of life under colonization and apartheid, community members aim to mobilize audience members in the broader struggle for freedom and equality in historic Palestine. 

 Endorsers of the Freedom Bus include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Maya Angelou, Noam Chomsky, Omar Barghouti and Peter Brook. The Freedom Bus is also endorsed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). 

 Using stories, photographs and video, Ben Rivers will speak about the Freedom Bus initiative and its role within the popular struggle movement.  

 Ben Rivers is a British- Australian drama therapist, educator and cultural activist based in the Middle East.  He specializes in the use of applied theatre for community mobilization and is a co-founder of The Freedom Theatre's Freedom Bus initiative (www.freedombus.ps).