Afterlives of Modernism

In this episode Ravi Sundaram and Ashish Rajadhyaksha speak to the art critic and curator Geeta Kapur. The long twentieth century produced powerful movements that shaped politics, aesthetics and the idea of the contemporary. In the late 1990s, we have seen a renewal of postcolonial critiques in the contemporary art spaces, especially from the South. In this wide-ranging conversation with Kapur, we take stock of the idea of the contemporary, along with debates on art and cultural theory in the Global South.

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Geeta Kapur has several publications, among them her much-discussed When Was Modernism.  She was one of the founder-editors of the well-known Journal of Arts and Ideas. Her curatorial projects include major shows like ‘Bombay/Mumbai’ (co-curated with Ashish Rajadhyaksha) for the exhibition, Century City at the Tate Modern in 2001, ‘subTerrain’ at the House of World Cultures in Berlin in 2003 and most recently the cycle of shows called ‘Aesthetic Bind’ in  Mumbai in 2013-14. She is working on two books, Speech Acts and Critics Compass: Navigating Practice.

Speaking Otherwise is a podcast series on the Contemporary, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).  In this podcast, we speak to well-known scholars from the humanities and the social sciences on the critical questions of our times.