motherland cover contest

http://www.motherlandmagazine.com/cover-contest.php

these were the covers i put together, rather hurriedly, for the contest. the theme is 'ghosts'.

i finally went with the second one. my entry can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/motherland-contest/contests/217841/voteable_entries/51124304  

do vote if you like it, voting closes in soon!

invite for the (last) sarai exhibition

EXB: City as Studio II

Saturday, 25^th February, 2012

 Ends at 2 a.m.

Sarai-CSDS, 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi-110054

Please join us for an evening of art, thought, writing, media works, participatory performances, exploration, trespass and the sending and multiplication of different kinds of signals.

Featuring

Agat Sharma

Anirban Gupta-Nigam

Asim Waqif

Dyuti Mittal

Gowhar Yaqoob

Pratik Sagar

Rashmi Munikempanna

Sujit Mallick

Tanya Goel

Ujjwal Utkarsh

Thomas Crowley

Vishwajyoti Ghosh

Gitanjali Dang

Jyoti Dhar

Inder Salim

Raqs Media Collective

Solomon Benjamin

Vivek Narayanan

Kavya Murthy

wall at cafe ziro

Move

You are beautiful,

for you move to weave shapes,

If you were still, you are just

a face, a fine body, a useless thing.

Wedding

We were five,

and she, seven.

Little skirts, teary eyed bus rides,

and the confusions

that kept us together

without choosing them.

You are now twenty five,

I'm five,

and she, twenty seven.

A beautiful thing,

look at you,

on your sister's wedding,

with the fort

you have built

which I stand inside,

unclothed,

and unruly,

realizing I should have built mine

long back.

There are no clothes

to be worn now,

and I'm surrounded in forts.

Reveal

Stability is

belief,

order

method

knowledge

faith

boundary

and design-

went out together

now a house with four cats,

will you,

make me think

choose

make me wrap

my feelings into a cruel form?

Coincidences,

A moment of need

would not sustain itself

longer than tomorrow.

Should I not heed you, then,

and

in which form do I

reveal myself to you?

Kaleidoscope

Within a kaleidoscope that leaps through imprints,

each so strong but as fleeting, no one sliver could be caught.

Those who live not for themselves but in fear of the crowd are not worth a single minute. Since most don't have the courage to hold that mirror in others' faces, and still fewer, at the cost of shaming or revealing their own selves, the ones who do lose.

Notes to the self

1. Memories from school, the formative years.
A visit pending, walking through those halls again.
Old teachers, the morning choir, the prayer, the activity week, the golden chakra sitting at the entrance, seeing yourself in younger faces, wondering which was you, remembering who you were.

2. Busy week with family. more constructive time needs to be spent, photographs from the Scotland trip.

3. Everyone's getting married.

4. Simple joys, simple questions.
An ongoing search: to be this side of the fence, or that? Acceptance is the only way, and creating from your joys is as significant as creating from melancholy. One can stoke it endlessly, keep seeing the glass half empty, not be content till its what you only want it to be. We must let go they say, and be in control of the world at the same time, define your anchors. What if you don't know where you belong, or what to anchor yourself to? Is the so termed fool, suspended in uncertainty- not wiser than the one who follows the norm, lives in an illusion of anchors he chooses to define himself with?

In revealing what is, for what it is, lies a freedom that can never match the closure of becoming a fortress unto yourself. The conflict between revealing and concealing is an ongoing one.
Pride who you are in any moment, as you are.

5. An interesting day at the studio.
all of us(a mix of filmmakers, artists, curators, writers) sat around each other, being rapidly faced with short questions we were to answer spontaneously.
some of the questions were:

when is free affordable?
is silence golden?
what is the colour of your circuit?
when is pornography art?
where art thou?
does it matter?
Who knows who?

Is freedom chaos? Is chaos freedom?

Who controls?

What’s left unsaid?

Where does power hide?

What doesn’t sell?

Is there such a thing as good money?

When does it become a joke?

Can you keep politics out?

Is this not political?

Is art not an ideology?

How does any of this matter?

If it’s not documented, did it happen?

Are art suppliers art?

Who made the readymade?

Who made this?

When does an artist “make” it?

Is art labour? Is labour art?

Are artists workers?

What does it mean to ask a question again?

Does art need theory? Does theory need art?

Are we separate from our work?

Is this worth it?

Is the exhibition left or right side of the signal?

Is power contagious?

When does a collective become an institution?

Art Factory?

What legitimises art?

Have you come to the party?

Did you just climb the ladder?

Did you meet anyone new today?

What is the colour of your circuit?

Do you like what I like?

what could we talk about?

if noone but you and me know, did it happen?

5. Uncomplicating things, being content and in control. Listen; for there's more to learn.

Four Stories

I. Hope whispers each time-
it's worth life,
a misjudgment? and all of the hopeful
lost to it.

II. An amusement park we will be.

III. Dont be so much that a cup can't hold you,
while it sips away your taste.
I decide to be frivolous,
but even if I was nothing but a uniform, a remarkable dress,
I'd have been more grounded
than I am in knowing.

IV. Chapters lost with no trace,
on the metro with a girl,
I wondered how easy it is to impress.
Not one of us knows truth from lie
the more lost- the less lost:

Why does one even strive-
to be lost in stride?

________

Live for no one, but yourself.
Live never for one, but all.

multiply : the city

 

things surrounding me

             Open again.

                     the city:

                                                                     The city of  million forms.

Creation engulfs. Chew down, without inhaling a whiff. Count without adding. See without believing. Review without becoming. Redefine without naming. Wonder without knowing. Re-form without forming more. Feel the weight without distinguishing. Pause and just watch.

Be lost. And then if you must, know all over again; and let it go all over again.

Suspend your comfort and be helpless.

Re-open all that's grounded; let this overload weigh you down.

Did you ever go back?

I must create to talk about dissolution:

Ignore The flaws.

A city of a million forms. While you paste away upon the landscape, 
someone breaks it down. 

tomorrow: skies, landscapes, clouds, day sky, night sky, textures, backgrounds, signs, universe, wall(of two kinds), hens, residency form, letter, illusions, kimono, photographs, computer for repair, goodnight.