Ukieri Workshop presentation @ HCU

'What they will Excavate in 12,014 C.E.' - Video Art Installation

When I was working on preparing a portrait of the space I am living - Hyderabad Central University, two words came into existence in my Art practice vocabulary - Primal and Primitive, Which themselves are connected to my search for the origin.  The idea of this video started from the thought of making something big and permanent using very raw and primary material. The quest for permanent leads me to the entrance gate of university campus, where a big cliff witnesses every passerby. I thought of adding my presence in the record book of that cliff. So I made a drawing on that cliff with a piece of coal and video graphed the process.

After finishing that drawing, I asked myself what will happen to this work and drawing after few years as urbanization is changing the rocky landscape of the city. Then all of a sudden I felt that this cliff can be the story teller of our civilization after 10,000 years. So I used the recorded video and played it in a kind of setup of an excavated site using a monitor, partially covering it with rocks and a toy that I used to play. It was as if we were looking back at our history of art from a future time period like 12014 C.E where materials like this electronic monitor or video would be excavated instead of pots and earthen ware.