Guggenheim Programs with Contemporary Artists from South Asia
5th Ave at 89th St
New York City
Join us for the following programs featuring artists in the Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim: Being Singular Plural, on view March 2–June 6. The exhibition presents recent and newly produced film, video, and sound-based works by seven of the most innovative and visionary artists and filmmakers living and working in India today. Being Singular Plural is the first Guggenheim exhibition to exclusively feature artists from South Asia and is curated by Sandhini Poddar, Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim Museum.
Artist Walkthrough
Eye to Eye: In Memory
Friday, March 2, 2–4 pm
Annex Level 7
Join artist Kabir Mohanty, sound engineer and designer Vikram Joglekar, and their creative team for In Memory (2009/12) for a behind-the-scenes explication and demonstration of the work, on view in Being Singular Plural. Learn how the interactive installation mixes live Foley sounds, prerecorded tracks, and exterior noises transmitted live from outside the museum. FREE with museum admission on a first-come, first-served basis. Limited capacity, no advance registration required. For more information, contact publicprograms [at] guggenheim.org, or visit guggenheim.org/publicprograms.
Artist Talk
Elaine Terner Cooper Education Fund: Conversations with Contemporary Artists Series:
Amar Kanwar
Tuesday, March 6, 6:30 pm
Meet Amar Kanwar, whose video installation The Torn First Pages (2004–08) is included both in Being Singular Plural and in the Guggenheim Museum’s permanent collection. Kanwar’s politically astute films and videos, which he has made for the last twenty years, are fragmented narratives of violence, displacement, and resistance told through lyrical, compassionate images and texts. In confronting the geopolitical situation of Burma under its recent military dictatorship, Kanwar offers hope, relayed through the lives of numerous artists, students, activists, poets, monks, and exiles involved in this resistance movement. Reception and exhibition viewing follows. FREE for students with a valid ID who RSVP to boxoffice [at] guggenheim.org. For tickets, visit guggenheim.org/publicprograms, or call the Box Office at 212 423 3789.
Film Screening with Artist Q&A
Shumona Goel and Shai Heredia
I am micro (2011)
Wednesday, March 7, 12 pm
I am micro (2011) is a 35 mm black-and-white film that celebrates collaboration and small-scale independent filmmaking through a combination of documentary and visual poetry. Images are culled from two different sources—a shoot around a defunct Kolkata-based factory for optomechanical and optoelectronic instruments and behind-the-scenes footage from the set of a new work by filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia—and overlaid with a voiceover by director and screenwriter Kamal Swaroop, whose debut film Om Dar-B-Dar (1988) initially reached wide acclaim but quickly fell into obscurity. A Q&A with Goel and Heredia follows. FREE with museum admission. Visit guggenheim.org/filmscreenings for additional listings.
Public Studio
Desire Machine Collective
In residence: March 2–24
Drop-in hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 1–3 pm
Screenings: Fridays, March 9, 16, and 23, 5 pm
Public program: Tuesday, March 20, 6:30 pm
Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya of Desire Machine Collective offer exhibition visitors a chance to participate in a unique public studio. Jain and Madhukaillya have worked together since 2004 in testing the limits of moving images and the roles they play in recording social histories. The residency will include the development of new artwork as well as conversations about technology, ecology, cinema, and artistic collaboration. Being Singular Plural includes Desire Machine Collective’s site-specific interactive installation Trespassers Will (Not) Be Prosecuted (2012) as well as the moving-image works Residue (2011) and Nishan I (2007–12). The artists will also participate in a public program on the philosophical outlook that drives their thought and work.
For tickets to the public program, visit guggenheim.org/public programs, or call the box office at 212 423 3789. FREE for students with a valid ID who RSVP to boxoffice [at] guggenheim.org. For more information about the residency, contact publicprograms [at] guggenheim.org.
*Image above:
Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris © Amar Kanwar.
