Introduction
A projection always involves an incandescent transference, some crossing of a void or darkness to effect luminous landings on a distant surface. Without projections, we would have no cinemas, no city plans, no forecasts, no wagers, no fantasies. Projections convect questions, magnify dreams and illuminate desires. Sarai Reader 09: Projections translates this imperative to act as a transport of illumination to build an axis of central questions…
Projections operates across two surfaces at once: on the printed page of this book (the ninth and final publication in the Sarai Reader series) and within the context of the contemporary art exhibition titled, ‘Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition’. The exhibition and all the processes that arose within it anticipated the book’s concerns through an occupation of time, space and attention over a nine-month-long duration at the Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon…
Projections is not a catalogue of the exhibition at the Devi Art Foundation. Nor is ‘Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition’ a curated illustration of the concepts advanced by the book. Rather, the publication and the exhibition act as adjacent platforms from which new ideas and concepts, discursive as well as aesthetic, set off as travelling companions and find their separate yet occasionally converging itineraries.
This book is a roadmap of that journey.
Production
Edited by: Raqs Media Collective and Shveta Sarda
Assistant Editor: Shyama Haldar Kilpady
Design: Pradip Saha / DamageControl
Design intern: Nirmal Singh
Cover image: Anisa Rahim
Back cover image: Chandan Gomes
Section separators: Pradip Saha
Read
The entire book can be accessed and downloaded from the Sarai archive.
Contents
BANG Re Worked – C:\VEhF\
Projections – Editorial Collective
SECTION ONE
“Life Injected with Life”: Locating Tolerance in Nasreen Mohamedi’s Abstraction – Robin Simpson
Making the Familiar Strange – Rohini Devasher
Projecting a Bengal Delta Settlement: Description of a Liquid Territory and its Development – Hans Hortig and Boris Murnig
Möglichkeitsformen: Expectation and experiment in the work of the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative, 1968-69 – Andrew Weiner
Expanding the Possibilities of Painting in Space: Fluctuation between Timeless and Time-based Perception – Silke Eva Kästner
SECTION TWO
The Digital State of a Moving Image / The Moving State of a Digital Image – Barbara Sirieix
A Vision of Waste: The Political Imagery of Tents – Nandita Badami
V for What? About the Actuality of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht for Contemporary Activism – Alexander Karschnia
Projection and Urban Gluing – Thomas Mical
Not Written in Stone – Deepani Seth and Thomas Crowley (with Inputs from Vandita Sharma and Chiranjeet Borah)
The Cinema as a Concert Hall – Alexis Bhagat and Lauren Rosati
SECTION THREE
Curatorial Governmentality: Air Design and the Atmospheres of Community in Contemporary India – Anirban Gupta-Nigam
Walking a Furlong – Kiran Chandra and Douglas Murray
Theorising Art Interventions: Manifesta 6 and Occupy 38 – Andrea Liu
Crime, Power and Violence: The New ‘Anti-Urban’ in Gangs of Wasseypur – Divya Vishwanathan
Back to the Future! Re-visioning 21st Century Public Libraries via a Journey through Time and Space – The Seven Ages of the Librarian in Graphic Novel Style – Alice Corble and Sara Wingate Gray
Reading The German Ideology ‘Here’ and ‘Now’ – Runa Das Chaudhuri
Living in Virtual Lands: Some Reflections on Virtual Geography – Meera Baindur
SECTION FOUR
Space Blankets and Emergency Weaves – Eline McGeorge
Heman Chong: Calendars 2020-2096 – David Teh
Agha Shahid Ali as Krishna: The Limits of the Secular in Kashmir – Akhil Katyal
From Networks to the Street: Global Connections and Local Issues – Aline Carvalho
Lanchonete – Todd Lester
Rio Cidade Olímpica – Yuri Queiroz Abreu Torres and Lucia Maria Sá Antunes Costa
Watching Indian Cinema in South Africa – Saba Sharma
SECTION FIVE
Drawing as a Mental Exercise – Gagandeep Singh
Gurgaon Utopia – Anisa Rahim
Ruin – Atreyee Majumder
The Logics and Realms of Small Town Territory: The story of Tiruchengode – Bhuvaneswari Raman
Projections of an Urban Revolution – Myrto Tsilimpounidi and Aylwyn Walsh
The Unknown Citizen – Chandan Gomes
Built to Lapse: The New Transpiring of an Old Time in Architecture – Venugopal Maddipati
Subject: Exhibition without Objects – Sadia Shirazi
The First Kurdish Cinema Conference and the National Question – Ali F. Sengul
SECTION SIX
Landing Imaginaries: An interview with Geeta Kapur – Sabih Ahmed
Embodied Constructions: Banaras through Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito – Rohit Raj Mehndiratta
Thinking Art in India: A Semi-Virtual Lab – Manuela Ciotti and Gigi Scaria
Digital Constellation in the ‘Contemporary’ – Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi
Projecting Tambaku Chaakila Oob Ali: Reflections towards a Versatile Archive of Political Cinemas – Nicole Wolf
For the City Yet to Come: Planning’s New Visual Culture – Joshua Neves
How About We Meet and I Tell You About Music Notation? – Mehreen Murtaza and Shehzad Noor Butt
SECTION SEVEN
Apocalypse – Akash Gaur
Misprojections: Self in the Age of Technoscientific Culture – Shiju Sam Varughese
What Does the Moving Image Desire? – Ayesha Hameed
Taking Flight: Perspectives from the Depths of an Ideas Factory – Janine Ramlochan
When Ghosts Come Calling” Re-‘projecting’ the Disappeared Muses of Malayalam Cinema – Darshana Sreedhar and Vinu Abraham
SECTION EIGHT
Error | Glitch | Noise: Observations on Aesthetic Forms of Failure – Charu Maithani
Enhancement or Distortion? From the Claude Glass to Instagram – Robert Willim
Of Civics Fiction and Fictional Civics – Sisir C. Anand
Representations of Sovereignty at the Boundaries: An Ode to Elinor Ostrom – Anitha Suseelan and Rajeev Kathpalia
The Prognosis Monkey – Kavya Murthy
SECTION NINE
Sarai Reader 09: Art as a Place