Edges of an Urbanized River – The Hoogly – Kolkata nexus, is a video & sound art piece which was the result of cross – cultural collaboration and was realized in Kolkata at the end of Jan, 2018. It explores the fringes situated the edge of the river Hoogly and the Kolkata city.
Josh Grey – Jung & Baismapayam Saha , got together in course of this 14 days residency to co-create this piece of video art, which was exhibited as part of tranArt.2 ; The River exhibition on a boat sailing the Hoogly river.
Josh Grey-Jung is a London based artist – blurring the lines between electronic music and conceptual sound design. Inspired and by Carl Gustav Jung his previous work has explored the themes of masculinity and inherited trauma. This journey took him closer to the delirium of a chaotic spaces which is quintessentially Kolkata, the universal dominance of the logic of the markets over the cultural.
Baisampayam Saha is a video artist & photographer whose journey has been the exploration of the fringes through his lens. He was born in Kolkata and lives here and this journey is an extension of his exploration into the city in darkness; or at the fringes between light and darkness.
We at Culture Monks are also exploring the theme of urbanity through a series called Urban Body – entrapments & releases and Joshs’ visit to Kolkata gave us the opportunity to work on this piece.
This residency was supported by Joshgreyjung ; Littlei & Culture Monks.
Edges of an urbanized River : The Hoogly – Kolkata nexus
A holy river full of plastic. A communist state catapulted into capitalism.
“Through deconstruction and abstraction of field recordings made in Kolkata, I produced an acousmatic composition that explores the impacts of plastic on the rapidly developing city. The piece was exhibited alongside a video by artist Baishampayan Saha, with whom I collaborated with as part of a 2 week residency in Kolkata”.
Josh Grey Jung
At night when the city sleeps having devoured the sun and plundered all which touched its shores. The night is a respite for all beings and the river – perpetually flowing reflects the delirium of the day of a sun which made visible and possible.
The River creeps in or rather we have ordained it to flow in, as it must as our ally – a mute witness of the plunder, the plundered itself now a slave of our needs & desires. The greatest plunderer must then enslave all the elements – fire, water & the air – all beings must be subjugated to the will of the master and his beings.
Parts of it will trickle in through crevices and ruptures to find its way to the abyss to preserve itself for posterity’s sake. What remains on the surface will reflect the present – plastic, scum, filth .
Some will call it the ‘Mother’
We like corpses will float
transported to transports to be productive.
Utopia shall be a glass of Coke and the red lipstick stained straw through which you carelessly sipped the nectar of your toil. Your offerings will be the excreta of your prayers.
That you will seek in the evenings of a hot summer day that space – unspoilt, virgin , non urbanized , spiritual to hold your lovers hand on an imagined Titanic.
Somewhere along the Crematorium
at the edges of the nexus of the Hoogly & Kolkata.
From delirium to sunnyata
sudipta dawn
Culture Monks 