BODY SPACE TIME CONVERSATION SERIES | AMITESH GROVER
The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art and Gati Dance Forum hosted a conversation with artist Amitesh Grover as part of the Body Space Time Conversation Series on April 26 at the FICA Reading Room.
The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, in collaboration with Gati Dance Forum, featured artist Amitesh Grover as part of the Body Space Time Conversations series, which is designed to invite a range of practitioners into the studio and engage them in a discussion about performance and its intersection with other disciplines. The series is part of BODY SPACE TIME, an ongoing 4-month certificate course in dance technique and choreography, running from Jan - May 2018 at Gati Dance Forum. It populates a context for the participants of the Body Space Time course, allowing them to engage with creative processes through their own practice and a wider dialogue. It also creates a space for practitioners to share their practice with the larger public, triggering a critical discourse that links various methodologies and forms.
This week featured Amitesh Grover, a performance-based artist in New Delhi, India. His practice explores intimate performance - in time, in labour, in technology, and in art. He has created performances on the work of grief, on the phenomenon of sleep, on the death of philosophy, and on the performance of happiness. To build his performances, he deploys several roles, that of an imposter, observer, guest, director, interviewer, coder, worker, writer, and artist. He collaborates with experts such as curators, scientists, philosophers, hackers, gamers, politicians, stock- brokers, cleaners et al to produce performances, texts, objects, images, installations, and films. His performances seek to build Performapedia, states of archive that are always endemically mutating. He spoke about a few of his recent projects, elaborating on the subsuming power of capital through workers' bodies with a "residency" at HCL, the top Indian IT firm. He also spoke on the politics of sleep, how grief can be reconstituted, the limitations of deviation, amongst other things.
Amitesh Grover was nominated for the Arte Laguna Prize, (Italy 2018), Forecast Award at Hauz Der Kulteren Der Welt (Germany, 2015) and is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including Tokyo Culture Creation Project (Japan, 2013), KMAT Residency (Australia, 2011), SNA Bismillah Khan Award (India, 2009), & Prohelvetia Residency (Switzerland, 2008). His works have been shown in performance festivals and exhibitions in Germany, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, England, Mexico, China, Philippines, & United States. In addition to being guest faculty at several art, design and architecture colleges, he is Assistant Professor at NSD, where he teaches Performance-Making, both in practice and theory. He also leads a course on Interactive Art (M.F.A. degree program) at Shiv Nadar University. He works with his long-term collaborator Arnika Ahldag. His work, thoughts, and press reviews are available online <www.amiteshgrover.com>
The Gati Dance Forum is a pioneering arts initiative that works in the field of contemporary dance. Founded in 2007, Gati has consistently searched for avenues to create a sustainable environment for the development of contemporary dance practice in the country through a body of pioneering and innovative projects that attempt to address areas as diverse as pedagogy, creation, research, outreach and arts advocacy and policy.