‘…how will I ever know if I have reached the horizon? There will always be a horizon waiting.’ 11 10 ’15 (diary notes)
Time and memory have been the primary points of inquiry in my practice where I explore alternate temporalities (experiential/ lived/ incoherent time) that resist its linear constructs (definite/ artificial/ coherent time). Memory is an essential means to understand time since past moments eternalise by fixing onto memory and traveling through time into the unforeseeable future- memory serves as a mode for time-travel. How do we know if we are really now, in this moment and not remembering? Just like how do we know if we are here in this reality and if this is real even?
I am interested in understanding what role time plays in the current economic structure predominantly dependent on converting each hour into production time while capitalizing on attention-time. The feverish urge of the present world to drift into the rabbit hole of screens constantly craving for our attention, has made me realise how slowness, rest, contemplation, solitude, day-dreaming and a horizontal living are forms of resistance; how niches for respite can be found by hacking into the capitalist machinery.
My artistic research into time and memory materialises through installations, interactive art, found objects, artist’s books + ephemeral mediums like sound, automated-calling systems, instruction-based art, multiform lexicon, and creating associative and conversational practices around gathering and sharing, among others.
Time and memory merge into each other; they are like the two sides of a medal. It is obvious enough that without Time, memory cannot exist either. But memory is something so complex that no list of all its attributes could define the totality of the impressions through which it affects us. Memory is a spiritual concept. For instance, if somebody tells us of his impressions of childhood, we can say with certainty that we shall have enough material in our hands to form a complete picture of that person. Bereft of memory, a person becomes the prisoner of an illusory existence; falling out of time he is unable to seize his own link with the outside world- in other words he is doomed to madness. As a moral being, man is endowed with memory which sows in him a sense of dissatisfaction. It makes us vulnerable, subject to pain. Andrei Tarkovsky (From Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, pg 57-58)
The technologies and schemas that private/public institutions capitalise through, are employed in my works– attempted by converting time into a currency in my work– KAIROI (2019-’24), a time-sensitive vending machine. Similarly, it’s seen in the collaborative practice -out-of-line-, that uses the disruptive and ubiquitous communication technologies of automated-calling & messaging systems to transmit sound/text works over lines–cables—signals–
[Bio- third person]
sonam (b. 1991) has her BFA from Faculty of Fine Arts– M.S. University, Baroda and MFA from Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida. She is currently a visiting faculty at Shiv Nadar University (2024-). She has co-/initiated collaborative art spaces such as first draft, –out-of-line–, pixel:dust and terrace/6464, received the FICA Public Art Grant for –out-of-line–, Five Million Incidents grant for KAIROI and IFA Art Explorations grant for pixel:dust; she was Artreach India’s third teaching fellow in 2017. She has participated in exhibitions at Goethe-Insitut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Watermans Art Centre in London, Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, India International Centre, IGNCA, Bikaner House, Mumbai Art Room, and so forth, and was an artist-in-residence at various spaces like What About Art? (Mumbai), Utsha Foundation for Contemporary Art (Bhubaneswar), O.P. Jindal Global University (Sonipat) and Kammari Residency (Treis Elies, Cyprus). Her writings have been published at Performance Research Journal at Taylor & Francis, BMJ Global, Hakara Journal, Shared Ecologies, ASAP Fiction, Art India/Special Issue and others. She is also the founding member of the NGO- Jeevan Stambh Foundation started in 2020, and Artreach India’s AIM (Apprenticeships, Internships and Mentorships) Programmes manager.