KHOJLIVE12

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Seating on first come, first serve basis. KHOJLIVE12 will be held indoors and outdoors. While arrangements for heating have been made, we recommend that you dress warmly. Please silence or switch off your cellular phones. No Flash Photography Permitted. DISCLAIMER: Please be warned that Hemant Sreekumar’s performance at 7:25 pm in blueFROG uses strobe lights and high pitched sounds. It is not recommended for those prone to seizures, palpitations or experiencing heart problems.

Noisindia #5 is a multimedia music experience based on the ongoing Ship Breakers Opera Project – a sonic print of Eryck Abecassis’ musical residency in India. Experimenting with fresh, chaotic sounds of the shipbreaking yards of Alang, Noisindia #5 looks to experiment with music, not in its conventional form of notes, chords or rhythm, but as noise. It experiments with noise not only as an acoustic phenomenon but also as a distortion (or an accident) of the ‘normal/polite’ signal, using conventional and non-conventional instruments and devices to express an idea, seek a certain construct, a structure. This experimentation will be performed against abackdrop of images and videos to form the final composition.

Eryck Abecassis Composition, Laptop, Video  &  Andy Naorem Electric Guitar, Electronics

Supported by The French Embassy in India and the Institut Français, New Delhi

4/7 is a continuation of an exploration and a celebration of exchange, both intimate and collective, between the artist and audience. Participating in an instruction-based gaming and interactive event, audiences in Karachi and Delhi will be invited to make their own journey through the show with opportunities to connect in real time through a digital medium. This event – a game in 2 parts – explores public and private behaviours creating a vibrant fairground of fragmented experiences, pushing the notion of interactive performance and audience/performer collaboration.

Amitesh Grover

Special Thanks to Vasl Artists’ Collective and the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Karachi Supported by The American Center, New Delhi.

The performance is a re-enactment of a speech given by the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, at independence in 1971. After the return of democracy to Pakistan in 2007 Tahir began developing an idea to recite seminal speeches made by politicians throughout Pakistan’s history. Politicians’ speeches represent a projection of power, history and contemporaneity that are intended to arouse, impress and direct the political masses. The speech is a key element of the politicians’public persona, which Tahir orally replicates in the form of performance. Exposing and examining the rhetorics and poetics of national bureaucracy, his re-enactments area means to analyse established historical narratives of Pakistan, and to reflect on itsturbulent political condition now.

Ammad Tahir

Nadir or the deepest depths, is a performance which explores ideas of isolation and the inescapable fact of bondage within separation. Articulated through the body, the movements are created from memories of deep emotional states. Pleading with Fate, God and Death, Nadir is an invitation to enter into this space and be convinced by it.

Diya Naidu

A synthetic performance with light and silence. The performance simulates the violence, brutality and trauma of a forced sexual intercourse. The object used to demonstrate these emotions is a circle (a special case of an ellipse). This universally symbolic shape is applied here as a proto-icon for femininity which is then deeply violated.

Hemant Sreekumar

DISCLAIMER: Please be warned that Hemant Sreekumar’s performance at 7:25 pm in blueFROG uses strobe lights and high pitched sounds. It is not recommended for those prone to seizures, palpitations or experiencing heart problems.

If “aesthetic is the ability to manage contradiction” then those identities (inherited and cultivated) which divide us, here in this region of the world, crumble, once allowed to sit face to face. Projection “Inder Salim” is one such conceptual construct that repeatedly revisits its own core purpose via a visual mask, or by touching those geographies, which hold its historicity, or by stimulating others to taste this self or its contradiction…this food...

Inder Salim

Don’t Be Dotty is an autobiographical movement piece which questions conformity to social norms, especially by women, within Indian society. With marriage considered the acme of a woman’s life, Don’t be Dotty humorously joins the dots – or doesn’t – to form a ‘picture-perfect’ vision of life. Chamko Rani offers a peek into her dotty vision of life, a life lived in the distance between one dot and another. Don’t Be Dotty was created and performed as part of two-month choreographic process of Gati Summer Dance Residency 2010 at Gati Dance Forum, New Delhi.

Miss Dotty & Madame Potty

A gathering abandons voice and motion to explore the erasure and presence of silence. Pause to release is a performative piece whose protagonists are expressively silent in the eloquence of a gathering at a standstill. Time has stopped. It is a still life that expresses the eroticism of passing time, the impotence of silence. It is an occupation of the silences between sounds and movements. A frozen tableaux of partying, a scene of indeterminate engagement with the audience. Artist supported by Project 88, Mumbai.

Neha Choksi

Artist Pushpamala N. and poet Mamta Sagar explore the idea of freedom and captivity through the work of the first Kannada woman writer and Nationalist, Nanjangud Thirumalamba. The half-hour performance lies between performance art, theatre and literary monologue. Set against a stylized theatrical set from popular theatre, here Mother India regally sits, the contemporary woman poet explores the history of women’s reformation as central to the Indian freedom movement and the debates around it, all the while interrogating the figure of Mother India as representing the nation. Conceptualized by Pushpamala N & Mamta Sagar Production. Design © Pushpamala N. Text © Mamta Sagar.

Pushpamala N & Mamta Sagar

Chhota Paisa (small money) consists of Hans Koch’s composed music intervention over and underlaying the collection of hawkers’ voices by Rashmi Kaleka. The hawkers’ ‘untrained’ voices shift and change with Hans’ Messiaen-like tapestry, juxtaposed with a visual that takes us through a sea of roofs in Delhi – the idea is to suture ‘everyday history’ with the contemporary. The morphing of street/ambient sounds, through a collection of diverse and native instruments, will be performed live by Suchet Malhotra as an introduction and an apt counterpoint to Chhota Paisa.

The work Chhota Paisa (small money) is a collaboration between the Swiss musician, Hans Koch and the Indian artist Rashmi Kaleka. The piece is partly commissioned by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council in 2011 and 2012.

Rashmi Kaleka in collaboration with Hans Koch & Suchet Malhotra

Shadow Walkers is a chronicle in parts of eclipse chasers, people who are addicted to walking in the shadow of the moon. A chronicle in the sense of an almost obsessive subculture of people whose lives have been transformed by the night sky. For the past two years, Rohini has been working on a form of collective investigation with amateur astronomers in Delhi, collecting stories, interviews, conversations and histories. How does one create a sense of engagement with someone else’s experiences? Is it possible to be a participant again once a work is complete? As an amateur astronomer herself, Rohini is keen to explore the dual role of the artist as both ‘participant’ and ‘observer’. Shadow Walkers is one vignette within this project.

Part of the research for Shadow Walkers was undertaken during the Sarai Associate Fellowship, City-as-Studio – an initiative of the Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi between February and November 2010.

Rohini Devasher

Spirit Eaters explores notions of identity, cultural specificity, aspiration and excess that preoccupy Subodh Gupta’s art making. De-contextualizing the presentation of specific cultural practices, Spirit Eaters harks to his childhood experience of watching kanthababas, a group of paid, professional eaters in Bihar who rapidly consume vast amounts of food for the appeasement of the souls of ancestors and elders. The performance is simultaneously repulsive, vulgar, amusing and awe-inspiring.

Subodh Gupta

They stand and sit motionless in the dark. Six figures dressed up, positioned in a straight line, attentive to their cue. Are they poised to move, are they frozen in meaningless gestures? They are lined up in the wings; they are already on the stage. When the lights come on, the play will start. Is 'waiting' part of the enactment? We, voyeur-viewers (jaded exhibition-goers, excited fashion-gazers), take in the silhouette, examine some material detail, build up a narrative. Inside the glass box and outside we participate perchance in a performance act(an act of performance).

Vivan Sundaram

OUTSET India was founded in 2011 by Feroze Gujral. It is a philanthropic organization dedicated to providing a platform forcontemporary art in India, and for Indian artists abroad. The organization aims to offer vital support for artists and artorganizations through various activities including the production of new works, public donations and publications.

blueFROG is a revolutionary, integrated music project in India. It consists of the country’s premiere live music performance club, state-of-the-art music recording studios, a music production house, and an independent record label & artist management service.

KHOJLIVE12 is presented by KHOJ International Artists’ Association, supported by OUTSET India.

• Venue and beverage support by blueFROG at The Kila
• Additional venue support by Osianama – the Osian art museum and Evoluzione at The Kila.
• Alcohol sponsor ABSOLUT
• Media partner TAKE on art
• Individual project support The American Center, The French Embassy in India and the Institut Français, Delhi, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council
• Special thanks to Vasl Artists’ Collective and the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Pakistan