archive
Proyector, (2019), Madrid, Spain
Two presentation/screenings were given at the Auditorio Alcalá and Sala el Águila (Madrid) for the Proyector Video Art Festival, on the work of video artists, Ranbir Kaleka and Bani Abidi, also discussing the VisionMix projects and modes of transnational curatorial partnership.
MIRAJ 7.2, a special issue on South Asian Moving Image. (2018)
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Guest edited by Lucia Imaz King and Rashmi Sawhney, this journal edition offers a critical review of artists' moving image produced in South Asia. Its pre-histories in experimental documentary film are also discussed regarding their impact on contemporary art practices in and beyond the region. The issue includes a collection of articles and reviews with contributions from Nancy Adajania, Behroze Gandhy, Avijit Mukul Kishore, Adnan Madani, Khaushik Bhaumik, Shai Heredia and Nicole Wolf, among others.
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Available to purchase online. Click here.
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ISSN: 20456298
Online ISSN: 20456301
VisionMix: Future Orbits Masterclass series, (2018), University of Winchester, UK
Guests included leading film directors, a producer and film composer to engage with University of Winchester’s film production students: a research and practice initiative supported by the partnering University.
Future Orbits (2017), Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India
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As part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India, 2017, VisionMix curated the event detailed here: Future Orbits 2017-18
Artists, Filmmakers and Curators’ Workshop, (2015)
VisionMix network’s participants delivered 30 talks on their practices, installations and film screenings. It was convened to question an increasing confluence between “documentary film” and certain branches of non-linear or so called “artists’ film and video” distributed in galleries or as site specific installations (rather than black box spaces). Gallery spaces are increasingly seen as ‘porous’ to conflicts from the world outside. Yet many artists and filmmakers who are successful enough to control how their works travel as global commodities are themselves choosing to make work that pitches itself as beyond personal accountability, and is therefore socially immune, thus swapping roles with how the gallery space previously functioned. In other scenarios, it seems that to replicate the tactics of journalism that commodifies violence, pornography and images of the abject, is often a much lauded form of dis-engagement of the filmmaker or artist from what they represent.
What became apparent about the VisionMix associate artists’ projects is that their engagement and sense of accountability in their productions is palpably felt. We draw from certain shared political affinities, such as the critique of normative representations of gender and sexuality, queer and feminist, critiques of ecological and environmental issues, an anti-colonial resistance and/or a sense of scepticism about the privileged currencies of art and its commodification. Our projects, whilst being socially and historically responsive, also strive towards the poetic; a quality sometimes found through an attitude of disobedience, subversion or at other times in an irrational pursuit of the imaginary. VisionMix’s artists are clearly focused on the contested spaces in the social world, but resist the temptation to isolate the lives we live from the art of film and photographic storytelling.
‘Politics’ constructs ways of forging truths that are centred on the collective, attempting to bring about (notions of) equality or to transform models of governance or resistance towards specific ideological targets. But for artists, collaborations are often about very small-scale yet significant partnerships that are able to embrace difference and make it creative. Through art (and film), we experience the world envisioned and lived from another’s perspective, acknowledging perceptions that are dynamic and perpetually unfolding.
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