»Zigzag Afterlives« contextualises the unacknowledged histories of transcultural collaboration and experimentation against a backdrop of nationalism and anti-colonial struggle, the global counterculture, the student and civil rights movements, and the Cold War.
The programme criss-crosses disciplinary boundaries and geopolitical constructs in a productively non-linear constellation, starting with the extraordinary film »Syzygy« by the artist Akbar Padamsee, the catalyst of the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), a trans-disciplinary collective initiated in the late 1960s. Also on show is the Indo-Canadian artist P Mansaram’s collaboration titled »Intersect« with the prophetic media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the late 1960s featuring a soundtrack by the celebrated Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar. »Events in a Cloud Chamber« is a relatively recent metaphysical investigation into Padamsee’s lost film made at VIEW by the filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia (2016). »Breaking Ground« by artist and filmmaker Nina Sugati SR, which she made in the early 1970’s while a student in America at Cal Arts, reveals an unflinching landscape of racial injustice and the political subconscious, a territory that few of her contemporaries of Indian origin had dared to explore.
Films
»Syzygy«, directed by Akbar Padamsee. Film Animation by Ram Mohan, 1969-1970.
»Events in a Cloud Chamber«, directed by Ashim Ahluwalia. Single-channel video, Super 8/16 mm, 2016.
»Intersect«, directed by P Mansaram. Collage film featuring Marshall McLuhan and Ravi Shankar, 1967.
»Breaking Ground«, directed by Nina Sugati SR aka Nina Shivdasani Rovshen. 16mm Kodak Reversal Film, 1972. Transferred to Video and digitised with Screenplay Graphics approx. in 2018.
Curated by Nancy Adajania. Commissioned to accompany »We Found Our Own Reality«, an exhibition by Paul Purgas, co-commissioned by Camden Art Centre, Brent 2020 with the support of The Elephant Trust.