Vivan Sundaram

Vivan Sundaram to Roshan Jagat Rai
R : You use photographs, videos, and cinema footage in your installations. Your endeavour on the whole is to realise the art work with several artistic disciplines.. While you give significance to a great deal of staccato rhythms in the creation and placement of object, image, sculpture-as though cutting from shot to shot- you seem to be searching for a...

Vivan Sundaram to Roshan Jagat Rai
R : You use photographs, videos, and cinema footage in your installations. Your endeavour on the whole is to realise the art work with several artistic disciplines.. While you give significance to a great deal of staccato rhythms in the creation and placement of object, image, sculpture-as though cutting from shot to shot- you seem to be searching for a flow, perhaps a sequencing that is bound or unbound by a cinematic kind of narration.
V : Many inputs of the cinema enter my work but I am wary of making a fetish out of them. There are different narrative modes, sometimes, they work against each other. When you watch the video screen you are in a static position, so also when you watch a film in the cinema hall. The relation of the viewer to the screen with moving images is different for the viewer of the exhibition where I deliberately propel the audience to move about, shift the gaze, turn the head etc. There is no fixed position, a "no-seat position", no one point of view in my new sculpture/installation art work. The body of the viewer as a presence inside the spaces of the installations is taken into account.I construct according to that scale so that passive reception is interrupted all the time. I do not think that this is so for the film maker.

R: In your latest exhibition, Shelter, the tactile, sensuous surfaces, - the rice bowls, under the half-hoisted table, the experiment with video sensations, colours, lights, sound and music ( House/Boat) are individual sculptural entities within the orchestration of the idea of shelter; The connection between the free-standing pieces has a distinct language of enunciation. You have to walk up to objects, move away and around, peer into the depth of an image- it is the way the camera looks at reality with lens and angle . In your on-going discourse on method and ways of seeing and hearing you seem to have included the "subjective" position of the hand-held camera and also urged that your viewer become this probing camera on the move; you include devices that bring in text, speech, theatre ; they intrude, disturb the sonority of the object-sculpture.
V: I like taking photographs and try to approximate the filming process. These are ways of seeking meaning. Creating layers, different angles, perspectives.but I am not bound to these methods in laying out an order or look of an exhibition.

R: Did you want to archive your exhibition at the Durbar Hall of the Victoria Memorial when you made a video as a representation of an artwork? It seems as though you would like to use the syntax of many disciplines those that are beyond paint and canvas. The historical context of the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta exhibition is presented in short, nifty shots of agitation and in romantic movements as the forward slide on the rail track; the acknowledgement of the great Bengal film-makers, Ritwik Ghatak or Satyajit Ray; the acting space of the performer, whom, you say is the site visitor-comes into an ambit of memory, affirmation and rejection. The spoken word, music and poetry enter as choral elements in the spaces of every artwork. You may as well say that you are going to give a performance, indeed have a show!. The old boundaries of art, installation and sculpture have been discarded; the energies of the artisan, the aura of technology and electronics begin to kind of collide. You jostle meaning, that comes off as a montage of ideas and visualisations. Yet, you do not settle into this "cut-and-place" mode of narration.
V: The spaces I set up propose that the performer make an ENTRY- as in theatre. I have wanted to make Shelter a stage set, a performance space even suggested this to Maya Rao.(actress, dancer). The Calcutta exhibition could also be used as theatre space. Many of the exhibition items can be seen as props the bed, the tables that make up the adda,(a meeting place, like a café) the railway track etc. The actors and the public move about the space, the scenes can shift dramatically to another location; The idea of a walk- through event interests me. Some elements of the pilgrims walking in the Ram Lila festivities in Benares can overlap as a theatrical ritual - a congregation, a procession are elements of theatre. Yes, despite all the ‘staccato rhythms’ that happen because of trying to create a melting pot, I do wish to retain an entropy, acquire an order, what you call a flow; but it will lead to a greater unity, which I might not wish to have. Sometimes I think things become a little too clear, defined, neat. Sometimes too cold, or too distant. That is why I like to shift my "props" to new locations and place them in a fresh context each time.

R : Are you then on your way to making exhibitions that you will inevitably video for a second look? An alternative rhythm, or a new representation of idea and material? Is gazing, and walking around the object-painting, an invitation to construct from the objects and artifacts ? The cinema and the video -- they really are two different mediums with their unique proportions of scale, lens, frame and movement; Your work nevertheless seems to rely on the facilities of these mediums, towards finding a language and text that swings towards and moves away from any exclusive position and point of view.
V : The ‘second look’ construction, re-presentation are essential to a site specific art work. The take on this will vary a great deal. The documentary film maker will show it in one kind of narrative, the artist might take certain liberties retaining some of the old as new elements get interpolated. Once again the performance bit comes in. Like a moving theatre company, shifting from town to town improvising with its repertoire I too seek the involvement of audiences, who should feel free to interpret meaning in the art encounter I arrange and set up.