Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series: Anthropology and Art History

Performance and De-synchronization: Opening the Past in Contemporary Indian Photography

鈥溾n South Asia, though the future may not always look open, the past rarely looks closed鈥 (Ashis Nandy)

 

Nandy鈥檚 observation about the productivity of the past provides a frame to position several contemporary photographic practitioners who have performed representations through diverse idioms which have recently been termed 鈥減ostdating鈥. Approaching work by Pushpamala N, Waswo X. Waswo, Olivier Culmann, Gauri Gill, Suresh Punjabi, Naresh Bhatia and Cop Shiva this talk explores deliberately belated copies and strategies of de-synchronization which split open the past, exploring an 鈥渆vasive鈥 doubled time, in order to complicate the future.

Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. He is the author of Photography and Anthropology (Reaktion, 2011) and (together with the photographer Suresh Punjabi) Artisan Camera: Studio Photography from Central India (Tara Books 2013). He was awarded a Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2013.

 

Sponsored by听The F. M. Kirby Foundation

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