Press Release, February 22th 2009
Shaina Anand & Ashok Sukumaran (India)
ANISOTROPICS
March 12 - 28, 2010
MUU gallery and Pixelache Festival present the first exhibition of Shaina Anand & Ashok Sukumaran in Finland.
Ashok Sukumaran will be at present at the opening, and also during the Pixelache Festival March 27-28.
Opening of the exhibition in MUU gallery Thursday March 11th, at 5-7 pm. Welcome!
The exhibition titled Anisotropics (as part of Pixelache's annual Signals from the South programme), presents a series of
works by Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran (India). The featured projects are based on temporary public works,
media interventions and other artistic probes into technologies, communities and spaces in Asia, Africa and the MiddleEast. Anand's and Sukumaran's work digs for what lies under, within and next to, "networks". It attempts to bring a broad
range of thinking to new media conceptions of virtuality, systems and participation.
The exhibition title refers to anisotropy, the property of materials or mediums being direction-dependent. Crystals, wood
and tendons for example are anisotropic, they show different strengths when pulled in different directions. The projects in
this exhibition suggest paths for technology that are drawn in other directions than their capitalist capture or
obsolescence. When radio or electricity or CCTV is "pulled" in this way, it reveals a different set of properties, a vivid
materiality and expanded parameters that are not just perceived or potential, but real.
Glow Positioning System (GPS), Changes of State and the Recurrencies series are projects exploring urban
electrical infrastructures, nights in the city, and the desire and possibility of people to act within these. In GPS, a 400m
ring of both existing and new lights enters homes, restaurants, offices, empty apartments, and the old Post Office
building, in downtown Mumbai. This panorama was animated via a hand-crank mechanism located on the pavement,
giving to anyone the chance of turning this cityscape into a "filmic" experience.
In Sept soirées, the artists set up temporary micro-radio and local cinema events in the Marche N’ Gellaw, a suburban
market in Dakar, Senegal. To overcome constant power cuts, micro electricity was produced via a simple buffer system
composed of car batteries and an uninterruptible power supply. Often vendors would "sponsor" the evenings by charging
the batteries. These events create a new daily routine, a space and time of collectively watching/listening/ broadcasting.
The exhibition also includes Khirkeeyan (CCTV and household TV project, Delhi), RustleTV (a cable TV channel within
a market, Bangalore) and The Neighbour Before the House (video project in Al Quds-East Jerusalem).
Shaina Anand is a filmmaker and media artist. Ashok Sukumaran is an architect and artist. Both are based in India and
their work has been exhibited widely internationally. They are co-founders of CAMP (http://camputer.org), a space for
artistic research and practice located in bombay, and co-initators of the Pad.ma (http://pad.ma) online footage archive.
Their work has received several awards, including the first prize for the UNESCO Digital Arts Award, 2006 (Sukumaran),
a Golden Nica and three honorary mentions at the Prix Ars Electronica (2007, 2005 Sukumaran, 2007 Anand, 2009
pad.ma), and the first Jury Prize at the 2009 Sharjah Biennial (as CAMP).
The exhibition is organised by Pixelache Festival in collaboration with the Artists' Association MUU and is supported by
Ministry for foreign affairs of Finland.
MORE INFORMATION:
MUU gallery: Timo Soppela, [email protected], +358-(0)9-625 972, http://www.muu.fi
Pixelache Festival: Nathalie Aubret, [email protected], +358-(0)50 46 57 929, http://pixelache.ac/
Press Pictures: http://www.pixelache.ac/2010/press/
http://www.pixelache.ac/helsinki/festival-2010/programme/signals-from-the-south/
| MUU galleria | Lönnrotinkatu 33, 00180 Helsinki, Finland | +358 9 625 972 | [email protected] | www.muu.fi |
| ti - pe 12 - 17, la - su 12 - 16 | tue - fri 12 - 5pm, sat - sun 12 - 4pm |