2012
L.T: You are trained as a sculptor, both in India at Baroda and in London at the Royal College of Art. At the same time, you have also created several web based and video projects. How did you come to making digital works?
K.S: I didn't have to go anywhere; it came to me - to all of us. Affordable movie making and the internet became accessible. When I was in art school, for many of us, making movies was the big dream. So when a video camera became accessible I couldn't help but make movies. I had made physical objects for many years, you know what a fuss it can be to make, show and keep sculptures…. When the internet popped up I couldn't resist finding out what art I could make specifically for it - to be able to have exhibitions running 24/7, potentially forever, everywhere in the world, just by moving fingers and without needing approval from any cultural authority - that was a dream I hadn't dreamt. It was euphoric. My desire to travel was also complemented by the portability and ubiquity of these new emergences.
L.T: What are your thoughts about the terms 'new media,' 'media art,' and 'digital art?'
K.S: Same as my thoughts on the terms 'art-nouveau', 'modernism', 'avant-garde' or 'futurism'. They are not perfect definitions but are acceptable for reference sake. It's difficult to define things that are yet to happen in existing terms.
I like pushing the discrepancies in the terms to include pre-contemporary technologies. 'Digital', or more appropriately 'binary' communication began with the use of Morse code, which could be transmitted in many forms that existed before electricity. Although the term 'new' eludes age in knowing futility, it's the one that makes me feel best - like as though we're about to go out shopping. It's also the one that is destined to survive. 'New' has been the good-luck charm for art. Evidence lies in the number of times variants of the term made their appearance and have remained in the history of culture. I like to apply the backronym 'Nano.Electronic.Wireless' for 'N.E.W' media to help communicate what it stands for.
L.T: How would you characterize your practice as an artist?
K.S: I do art as a hobby, exactly like a non-artist, except that I get to spend a lot more time on it. At the end I also like to have something to show off, something that can engage peoples attention, hopefully even that of an archeologist in a distant future. Contemporary Art is quite accommodative to hobby if it's tweaked appropriately. So I put myself in the shoes of an audience and ask myself what art I would like to see, and when I've imagined something that seems doable, it gets made.
L.T: Your digital works are considered by some to be a significant contribution to Indian new media, particularly because of an emphasis on working directly with codes and scripts.
K.S: For my generation of artists I was fortunate to grow up with a computer - a Sinclaire ZX81. In the early 80's if you had access to one, all you could do on it was write programs. I learnt the language young, and 20 years later when computers became commonplace and knowledge in writing code not absolutely necessary, I still had my vocabulary to communicate with these machines in their native tongue. It was something I could take advantage of, with not much competition - at least in the field of contemporary Indian art. So I exploited the situation.
L.T: What is your perspective on the development of new media (digital art) in India?
K.S: The rearview mirror shows a positive picture, much seems to have happened under those terms: at least we're talking about it. But I don't think the horns will blow for long. They primarily refer to the technology being employed for cultural practices rather than an ideological shift. The technology in question has certainly facilitated an important mass cultural revolution that's largely being called Commonism - but a very small percentage of so called contemporary digital media art actually shares the commonist ideology. As the technology gets taken for granted the terms 'digital' or 'media' will loose specificity and dissolve indistinguishably with what's been around and what's to come – for commonists as well as contemporarists. 'N.E.W (Nano.Electronic.Wireless) media art' will however survive as the term, for people in the Telepathic age to refer to this brief period in cultural history that we see receding in the rearview mirror.
L.T: In my interviews with other artists (in India), many have spoken of the lack of public support for experimental practices including new media or media art on one hand, and the preference of dealer galleries for 'saleable' works, typically discrete objects, such as paintings or sculpture, on the other. What are your thoughts on the economics of new media art production in India?
K.S: Lots of good stuff happens with no support. Much contemporary culture is being produced and circulates at no cost. That's the biggest new-media boon. It accommodates so many forms of creative production. It's made so many tools affordable. So much is being rescued from obscurity and made commonplace. If you have the imagination you don't need too much money to do something radically experimental. That's one big positive side to the economics that has lent the cultural production its dynamics. Lawrence Liang, a contemporary Indian media philosopher explains these dynamics most eloquently in his 'Work of Culture in the Age of Digital Reproduction'.
There's also been much support from organizations like Khoj, Sarai and the IFA for professional artists and cultural practitioners. It's evident that these organizations have spent more on promoting experimental practices; more than any other form of contemporary art.
For obvious reasons the market has been reluctant, but it has not ignored new digital media art completely. I believe that the need for the market to preserve art is of greater value to art than money. And of course the art has to be unique, not offer itself to digital reproduction and circulation, or disappear, otherwise it does not need the kind of art market we are talking about. It's not just spatial art using new technologies that the market is looking at. Some of the early net.art I made became obsolete for the default configuration of newer browsers and operating systems. A little effort went into conserving these works offline on specially configured machines. One of these has just earned shelter in a private collection in India. The market will catch up. It may be too late for it to take part in the joys of conception, but for the purposes it exists to serve - the market can never be too late.
L.T: What works would you pick as your own most successful art?
K.S: The one I'm working on now, it's not finished yet.
L.T: When India and new media or media art are mentioned together, names that come to mind are collectives such as Raqs Media Collective, CAMP and Desire Machine Collective, and individuals such as Nalini Malani or Shilpa Gupta. It's difficult to believe, however, that there are not more new media artists in a country of a billion people.
K.S: Considering the number of citizens in the country who engage in any form of 'Contemporary Art' practice whatsoever - which is primarily a Euro-centric enterprise - the figures are pretty good. If you look at popular Indian culture on the internet, there's so much happening that there's not much room for big names, or the need to debate on whether its really 'new' or 'digitally native' or even 'art' - as long as it is inspiring.
L.T: Who, in your opinion, are the pioneers of new media art in India?
K.S: My idol is Umrao Singh Shergil.
L.T: Theorists such as Boris Groys (2009) and Ravi Sundaram (2012) believe that digital technologies and communications infrastructures have inaugurated significant changes in art and society. Consider the following passages:
Contemporary means of communications and networks like Facebook, YouTube, Second Life, and Twitter give global populations the possibility to present their photos, videos, and texts in a way that cannot be distinguished from any post-Conceptual artwork, including time-based artworks. And that means that contemporary art has today become a mass-cultural practice.
More people today in India access, circulate technological media than ever before. So in this post-media present, the old zone of the people has mutated into archivists, archeologists, media producers, event instigators, producing event scenes, artists, destroyers of the old secrets of power.
Significantly, both Groys and Sundaram emphasize similar changes, and do so in relation to the notion of contemporaneity, in relation to contemporary art. Would you agree with these assessments? If not, why not?
K.S: It is indeed largely true in regard to internet culture. But as speculation on the evolution of Contemporary Art practices, it is no different from the notion that photography would put an end to painting. They seem to have overlooked everything that the Internet and its peripherals cannot do. The physical Contemporary Art space still remains for original cultural material that cannot be circulated on electronic media and provide their unique, exclusive, and irreplaceable, spatial experience for those who want. People get weary of sitting on their asses and staring at screens, and those who are forced to do so for work would prefer to have something to walk around or into for cultural enlightenment.
It's no threat or surprise to the contemporary artist that the global population now practices post-conceptualism. School kids already did graffiti and housewives made impressionist paintings. It means that the professional artist is in a new age; it's liberation. The post-whatever-the-agenda-was is over. Now it's a pre-something age; exactly what that something's going to be - we'll find out soon.
L.T: How do you see the role of information and communication technologies in Indian society, particularly in terms of the flows of data they enable?
K.S: For 50 years we failed in the agenda of 'education for all'. There's new hope for it. The 'Hole in the Wall' project hinted at this some time ago and smart-phones are making it reality: With the new information and communication technologies there's no need to make humans literate in order to give them access to knowledge. First provide them access to knowledge and they spontaneously learn, from the desire to access it. It's happening through entertainment, a snowball effect is currently taking place. Government policy is being turned on its head.
L.T: What are your thoughts about the future of new media practices in India? Particularly given the very obvious lack of support from the public sector for this field?
K.S: Lack of support might have been the better way to begin. It means that the practitioners must really want to do what they've set out to with no other vested interests. Those complaining about lack of institutional support are probably using it as an excuse to extort more money (which is ok), and don't really know what art to make (which is too bad). If what has to be done really needs enormous amounts of money you'll find your way. Fasbinder stole cars to make movies.
L.T: What are you currently working on, what are your future projects?
K.S: I look forward to surprising you with what I'm currently working on, and with future projects - I look forward to surprising myself.
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