assemblage with excess
image in Boomerang
collapse
sharp split
spine as media and metaphor
indefinite clicks
oblique line
contact
fig 02
What follows is a subtext — an invitation to engage in a conversation shaped by the encounters this practice brings forth. The works unfold alongside this dialogue; direct links to them are available on the left.
Often, I find myself slipping into—or perhaps out of—thinking about how a thought takes shape within one’s position and temporality. It spreads, scattered across a field in flux, where even the faintest ripple bears weight, pressing a finitude into appearance—only to let it falter. What stays with me is this: the flux itself feels like a transgressive energy, carrying a latent heat, a life held close, always near.
In explaining the structure and formal aspect of making, I cannot avoid naming a thinking process, which I call ‘Frictional awareness'. It is not a simple awareness of direction or purpose, but rather a snapshot of movements that holds ambiguity. Yet with a language that is open to flaws and encompasses different types of mediation, much like the rabbit-duck illusion. [ fig 01 ]
The practice's affinity is to extend the thinking to a flight. The question of flight here is ‘How to imagine a language that is ‘Grounded while actively attending to ‘hover’?[1,2] The nearest Kannada word I like to identify with the above process is as ಸುಳಿದಾಡುವಿಕೆ [suḷidāduvike] 3. The flight that I am referring to should not be confused with the enlightenment approach of elevation, or with the caste stratification of the head as superior. The state of ‘suḷidāduvike’ is that which does not possess such a grammar of flight in a sense of linear up and down or pure and impure conception of purity. The attempts are to realize such a ‘Relation’ of suḷidāduvike, among that which is hovering, and the rest, which I call the ‘Ground’. The ‘Ground’ here is that which comes from the rift, which is immeasurable. Let’s imagine this relation between hover and ground in the form of an ' A cord’ [like in a kite - [ fig 03] ] connecting the Ground and which is ‘Not’. The cord does not need to be a single, defined locus of points or resemble a thread. The cord is a blurred thing and a place where the potentiality of finding a form is possible. But an approximation or a misunderstanding. In this intimate falls and flights, the work frames the cord, carving out a ‘Frictional Awareness’ that folds itself into a set. The complexities in which the cord stitches itself are historical objects, architectural settings, social contracts, flaws, deviations, and mundane moments of life.
The drawings or any finite explorations I deal with, try to draw of - ‘ಮೂಲಸುಳಿ’4[Moolasuli], the nearest English word as a ‘ Radical flight,’ [ fig 02], placing this as a subset of ‘Frictional Awareness’.
It is a state of negative freedom, in contrast to freedom, which is the result of constraints or any sort of hostility. But radical freedom is a self-inflicted, an involution sort of thing. A drive for weak disturbance but a profound deviation, like a ‘River turn.’ It's like how a river would take a curve in its journey, not always necessarily from an obstacle, but out of a poetic maneuver around numerous complexities.
The works shared here are starting points that help shape the way this way of thinking develops. One such drawing [fig on left] illustrates a possible diagram. Though it inevitably falls short and does not explain things in totality, nor can it be a medium to express such. Consisting of a contingent past of lived, imagined, filmed, mediated, and remediated as ‘Excess.’ This ‘Excess’ becomes necessary for the ‘swing’[Swing is a slight disturbance in flow, an anomaly in flow] - so a Friction [to find a warm touch] to be manifested by borrowing/tunneling the events to bring forth possibilities. In the making of suturing across history, images, and layered places, a friction becomes an aftereffect as a mediation for a ‘Radical flight’ [like a river turn, a luminous one]. I see that these frictional points are the ones that are charged with life, driven by the flux of history, energy, and life. Once again, as a note of caution, I refer to this drawing not as an attempt to understand or trace a coherent process. Instead, this act becomes a mode of thinking—one that moves, perhaps inevitably, toward misunderstanding.”
Drawing on the thoughts mentioned above, the studio techniques I involve are sculptural hovering, temporal swing, and tweaking through installations, moving images, and text. I observe the ‘frictions’ as a point of causing stagnation, or friction that propels motion/dissonance, and friction that creates an[an]amnesia - and offer me a thinking lens to attend.
During a fellowship in Beirut, I worked on one such improvisation, which led me to reflect on my practice in relation to my current trajectory [ click to page]. The work was initially conceived as a sculptural setup in search of dissonance. Registered via a kinetic assemblage, juxtaposed with image projections of instances of domestication of fire and deep listening to the Beirut cityscape. Looking at the cityscape as an in-between space of ever-transposing energy, an extraterritorial one. Although it is considered to fall within national territories and boundaries, it becomes a living entity beyond territorial reach. The sculpture becomes a temporary or weak event/space to attend to the unwrapping of the restrictions and creates dissonance with synchronicity with the excess.
To identify with the assemblage is to encounter a friction in making, a friction that resonates with radical flight. The assemblage becomes a triangulation, a maneuvering craft that allows me to hover and witness the excess/ground by hovering with the assemblage. The scratches that remain—marks left by the sculptural event—become traces of an intimacy with excess.
Image in Boomerang
During an Open Studio at the Jungpura Artist Collective space in New Delhi, the idea of ‘Frictional Awareness’ was explored through a lecture performance titled ‘Image in Boomerang’. The text [text link ]brings in the landscape that moves beyond a conventional understanding of friction as mere resistance—framing it instead as a charged expression capable of generating differential images, affects, and relations. Engaging with friction, the text invokes instances and relations across cosmic materiality, contributing to the ongoing shaping and un-shaping of landscapes.
An identification with the ‘Boomerang5’ sense is an inclination to ‘swing’ - to Boomerang is to mean to desire for the disturbance or a rhythm; in other words, it is to create more infrastructures/relations - a disturbance that cuts out to rupture, to allow for revealing and the creation of variations of knowing. It’s a disturbance, to Boomerang is to collapse [witnessing] on histories, or to ruminate on the past for a temporal swing.
A work conceived in Beirut [2024] was produced with an urgency to witness the landscape that surrounded me, positioning myself to collapse the Boomerang. [click to page]. The ‘mark making’ hovers around by three points, by revisiting what ‘flying’ is all about? With the wind as an infrastructure and rethinking what the wind could be, secondly by contemplating the history of the abandoned Rachid Karami International Fair by Oscar Niemeyer at Tripoli and its position within the history, and with a backdrop of ongoing intrusions of flying space and accelerationist tendencies.
The idea that intrigues me— ‘Grounded while actively attending to ‘hover’?—realizes a form of temporal suspension rather than seeing the hover as physical flight. A typical understanding of physical flight is that it occurs in accordance with current physical laws in our everyday environment, much like a bird flocking, perhaps.
However, the temporal suspension I refer to can be seen in two ways: firstly, how we can view the images as they are and bring forth latent affects and new relations using the same. With a line of thinking that images hold temporality, how could this temporality be revisited for a new relatedness? Secondly, seeing the temporal suspension as one that comes from the forced dispossession of bodies and embodied experiences within the enclaves of clashes of icons and everyday institutions that sustain such dispossession on bodies. Here, the body I refer to is not that of just a human, but rather something beyond humans, and that which brings forth life from the rift. A rift erupting from the ground; thus, the only ground we have is the Earth and the life that coexists with it, like a boulder. The sculptural hovering out of the excess/ground involves finding the chords and connections rather than considering the images as such, available, given, or normalized. A hovering that would realize a ‘bend’ [ಸುಳಿ/suḷi] in the possibilities of creating new relations.
in triangulation and warmth of boulders
In an instance, the search for a chord between the ‘Ground’ and hovering takes place within a site-specific context, marked by an archaeological backdrop, a history of caste struggle, the idea of home, local narratives, and power dynamics—forming a layered inquiry into memory, rift, and possibilities. An aspect of this inquiry involved the Boulders of the river Tungabhadra and its ecology in the making.
This way of sculptural hovering would not be a cantilever or a constant methodology I follow for such chords to be realized. But they sometimes become an aftereffect through which a new knowing of the encountered finite is possible. In this particular exploration, it becomes a means of re-encountering or reinterpreting the work in its aftermath.
The work titled “Sharp Split” [click here for page ] was an attempt at reimaging the slits within the landscape and hovers by triangulation of archaeological remains, ecology, and caste undercurrents. Situating itself by connecting with the ancient land of Neolithic remains, a landscape with Nittur minor edicts of Ashoka is structured around. The sculptural object becomes a node in collapsing the different memories and subjects. The attempt is to swing the chronospace within the boulders of the Deccan region through intervention. The structure unfolded poetically for a month until the next rains hit the area. Allowing for diverse interaction with local farmers, peasants, shepherds, kids, birds, and other things.
drawing the finite that distills and measures
Titled Indefinite Clicks, [click here for page], the work renders the slow melting of the machine—specifically, the computer mouse. Arranged with a ‘locked’ rotating chair in linear mode and other tweaked objects mostly found on the office site.Along with a graphic of a two-directional handheld pointing device ( electronic mouse) becoming an extension of the migration, drawing away from the distress driven on the bodies. The space becomes sufficiently useless and disturbed. In such improvisation, it allows the possibility of a snapshot of the absurdity of the labour in the corporate world building.
A five-channel sound speaker that draws on the experiences and aspirations of second-generation bodies from marginalized castes in migration to urban areas like Bangalore in search of financial stability and self-dignity. This became a mode of inquiry for me to understand the effect of ‘Precariousness’, which I have been working on since 2019. Currently, I am looking to go beyond this understanding and see what I can activate or make possible within these spaces of Precarity.
thinking to witness!
Drawing on the urgencies to propose ‘possible objects’ to speculate on ‘alternate history’, exploring things from the speculative fiction form. With an attempt in a framework to revisit the trauma and timeline of subaltern people. The framework employed emphasizes the significance of the perpendicularity of the backbone to the Earth's surface and its diverse interpretations across various fields.
With the work titled “Spine as media and metaphor” [click here for page].
The video unfolds through a computed portrait of a human—suspended between a corpse state and a not-yet-alive stillness—set against an outlandish landscape of skyscrapers without bottom and submerged in a fog of amnesia. The camera moves throughout the video’s duration, registering the entire scenography as static elements—each marked as a fragment of contingent history.
Amid the rugged terrains of the Deccan hills, a mystic figure unfolds—its body stretched beyond form, merging with the land it rises from. Overhead, a flying object that traces an imprint. Delineating the tremors of beyond-human kinships, the video senses the caste as a fiction of nature and its implications on deep-time relationships with the geophysical movements.
With nurturing my practice, I want to expand on the modalities of realizing the Friction, which are charged ones. I would like to bring forth more nuance in the material sense to understand hovering with the help of frictional awareness to cause Friction to collapse, resonate, or spin forth with[out] directionality. To give more commitment to the language of ‘swing,’ a temporal swing within my making/sculpting. To envision an image with a force positing a Reparative stance to imagine and swing more images.
The Quantum force I would like to sense in an image, as a form of ಸುಳಿದಾಡುವಿಕೆ[suḷidāduvike], is what is possible with frictional awrennees. By Quantum, I mean a tiny epoch of possibilities for potential repair and care. A move is to build more peripheries and weak positions beyond human and to ground with the Earth’s axis, an arc connecting the cosmos. An intention of sculpting as a practice to hover on temporalities, in a force to ground the histories, possible worlds, and beings. To create incomplete images, places, and worlds that could bring a space of healing and reveal more complexities.
DFXGHJK
2)Hover: A hover is a construction of language, an abstraction only to meet its death. It’s a flight that only realizes its failure to take off. The act of hovering, for awareness or a pop-up life.
3) ಸುಳಿದಾಡುವಿಕೆ [suḷidāduvike] -
Suli from the proto-dravidian root:
cuṭ- or suṭ – nearest meaning "to turn, hover, twist, whirl, wind".
āḍu- is to play or move
suḷidāduvik: a state of becoming non-stagnant, a deviation and flight to disrupt coherence.
cuṭ- or suṭ – nearest meaning "to turn, hover, twist, whirl, wind".
āḍu- is to play or move
suḷidāduvik: a state of becoming non-stagnant, a deviation and flight to disrupt coherence.
4) ಮೂಲಸುಳಿ - Moolasuli [Radical flight]:
ಸುಳಿ/Suli from proto-dravidian root: cuṭ- or suṭ- – nearest meaning "to turn, hover, twist, whirl, wind
A complete state of change, a point of action with no return, but a plastic language, and a pure act beyond transactional economy. Let's bring in the image of ‘a river turn/river bend’ to imagine this flight of no return. It is a physical stillness in the realm of everyday, but an accurate flight occurring through a convexity of history and ground.
The ಮೂಲ [root source] is not something I am referring to as original or that is from ancient times, but rather one that presents itself at ‘now’ as something that is always there but concealed by fog and erased because of dominant stagnant narratives and their images.
5) Boomerang: an object with wings to glide through the wind, a maneuver, a two-edged sword for play, and a weaponized tool of technological accelerationism in the form of modern Jets. Here, the attempt is not to define the Boomerang or to desire to control it, but to imagine what it is to be a Boomeranged, not in physical wind infrastructure, but to be able to fly in the sense of ‘radical flight’ within the infrastructure of History, Being and Mediation,a return of which was always there—an outsider theory of flight or an extraterrestrial one.
First drawn in 1892 by Fliegende Blätter; popularized in 1899 by Joseph Jastrow to illustrate perceptual ambiguity
fig 03