Sarai Reader 09
18 August 2012–16 April 2013
Opening: August 18, 6:30pm
Curated by Raqs Media Collective
A collaboration between Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon,
and Sarai-Centre for Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Devi Art Foundation
Sirpur House, Plot No. 39, Sector 44
Gurgaon 122033, India
Sarai Reader 09 is a nine month exhibition that will unfold as a process generative of visions, concepts, speculations and projections which, in turn, make room for heresy, for new modalities of being, for exchanges, relays and interferences. The exhibition will posit a situation of shifting co-inhabitation in a space by many agents and actors, in diverse, multiple, conjoined and contradictory ways. It intends to investigate the nature of the sensation of thinking, and its resonating extensions into the myriad worlds that we inhabit and invent.
Sarai Reader 09 will gather works incrementally over the nine months. Artists, researchers, scholars, curators, critics, filmmakers, writers, performers, dancers, musicians, magicians, activists, scientists, photographers, archivists, architects, poets, journalists, and more, are invited to make proposals that can be timed for specific durations. The exhibition space will keep transforming.
Sarai Reader 09 opens at 6:30pm on 18 August 2012, with:
Architectural interventions in the space of Devi Art Foundation, with Sayantan Maitra ‘Boka’ and Zuleikha Chaudhari. These interventions are to create an “empty space,” and so, to open it to multiple readings and transformations by participating artists over the nine months of the exhibition.
A proposal room, where proposals by artists for works in the exhibition, invited through an open call, will be available for reading. At the opening, there will be proposals by 40 artists for works that will commence after the opening. These will grow to over 100 proposals over the nine months.
A 1:1 architectural prototype (3x6x9 m) of the Cybermohalla Hub, by Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller, in collaboration with Cybermohalla Ensemble, Sarai-CSDS, Ankur: Society for Alternatives in Education; with Engelessman Peters Engineers, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, Daniel Dolder, Ana Farfan, Snehal Gada, Sayantan Maitra ‘Boka’, Steffen Sendelbach and Omar Siddique. The question of infrastructures for creative and intellectual life emerged in 2006 in Cybermohalla, a dense conversational milieu that has formed in Delhi over a decade (2001 onwards), and a project of Sarai-CSDS and Ankur. In 2007, Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller were invited into this conversation. A design of the Hub was proposed by them through conversations with Cybermohalla, and the first prototype was created in The Rest of Now, part of Manifesta 7, co-curated by Raqs Media Collective, Bolzano, 2008. It was then hosted by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (T-BA 21), Vienna, for one year. In 2011, a prototype of the Hub was made at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, as part of Living Frontiers of Architecture III-IV. Sarai Reader 09 brings the most ambitious iteration of the Hub to Delhi.
Release of the book Cybermohalla Hub, edited by Nikolaus Hirsch and Shveta Sarda (Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, and Sternberg, Berlin/NY, 2012). This book is a reflection on urbanism, architecture, writing and time by Cybermohalla Ensemble and Nikolaus Hirsch/Michel Müller, with contributions by Hu Fang, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jacques Rancière, Raqs Media Collective, Superflex, Graham Harwood, Ivana Franke, Amitabh Kumar, Aman Sethi, Bhrigupati Singh, Can Altay, Nina Montman, Solomon Benjamin, Martand Khosla, Rana Dasgupta, Sharmistha Mohanty, Christoph Schäfer, Prasad Shetty, Ravi Sundaram, Rupali Gupte, Daniela Zyman, Lawrence Liang, Zak Kyes, Vahni Capildeo, Matthew Fuller, Vivek Narayanan, Mathias Görlich, Nico Docx, Helena Sidiropoulos and Michel van Beirendonck.
Release of the book P.T.O, an appreciation of the listening, walking, reading, interviewing, collecting, questioning, mapping, recording, drawing, image-making and writing done by the hundreds of Independent Fellows associated with Sarai over the last decade. The works by the Fellows have been publicly archived through postings in the Sarai Reader-List and in the Sarai archive (in-house at Sarai-CSDS). P.T.O. is an edited, highlighted and re-sequenced version of these works, to bring alive the various dimensions and modalities of thinking and making. Edited by Shveta Sarda (Sarai-CSDS, 2012)
A talk by the curators, Raqs Media Collective, introducing the exhibition.
An evening of experimental sounds and electro-acoustic music featuring Ish Shehrawat (edgeCut | diFfuSed beats | Sound Reasons), Andi Teichmann (Teichmann Brothers), Brian Citro and Ignat Karmalito.
Release of The diFfuSed beats (diF) Audio CD, synthesised out of sounds, noises and field recordings from New Delhi, Munich, Zurich and around the world (Sound Reason banner). diFfuSed beats is the duo comprising Konrad Bayer and Ish Shehrawat as they engage with sound with both philosophical and de-constructive aesthetics.
The exhibition will be punctuated through “episodes”—points of focus and dispersal—where processes that have been undertaken by artists will gather impetus and open out across concentrated moments of public attention. Each episode will be a day-long public event, with workshops, performances, talks, discussions, special screenings and music.
Episode One: 13th October, 2012
Episode Two: 15th December, 2012
Episode Three: 3rd February, 2013
The exhibition takes its name from the Sarai Reader book series, which have been widely recognised as a site of critical and creative thinking. The making of the book Sarai Reader 09 (Projections), will accompany the exhibition.
Open Call for proposals for the exhibition can be found here.
Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition is supported by The Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi.
The prototype of the Cybermohalla Hub for Sarai Reader 09 is supported by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna. Cybermohalla Hub (book) is supported by Graham Foundation (Chicago), HIVOS (Bangalore), and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen). The sound performance for the opening is supported by Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institut), New Delhi. The diFfuSed beats (diF) Audio CD is supported by Goethe Institut, Pro-Helvetia and Sarai-CSDS.
