NEXT on SEA Conversations
Winter 2023-24
Technological Practice as Riyaz
How do we explore technology as a form of cultural practice through the conceptual lens of Riyaz? For us at SEA, Riyaz is a systematic way of practicing a form of art or craft with a long term commitment to not just learning it but also advancing the self and the form of practice in the process. It involves routine, discipline, engagements, isolation, diligence, play, repetitiveness and experimentation, through which one arrives at and struggles with the longue durée questions. As a practice–a technological practice, be it in architecture, music, sculpture, or engineering, riyaz involves a rhythmic engagement with the self, the technological matter (body, mud, brick, textile, strings, concrete) as well as the world within which the practice is located and towards which it is addressed.
This winter cycle SEA Conversations aims to explore technological practice or techne as riyaz. We ask: In riyaz, how does one engage with matter (molding, sculpting, weaving, screwing, ramming, kneading), which is not just material but also emotions, experiences, memories, histories, dreams and desires? What kinds of rhythms are devised between the practitioner, the matter, and the world in this practice of engagement? What kinds of routines, repetitions, and intensities constitute these rhythms? How does the material and the immaterial, shape the process and the rhythms? What kinds of asymmetries, imperfections, and unexpectedness emerge in this process? And what role do they play? How does the larger world, including the fields of art and architectural practices, within which the practice is located shape the riyaz? And lastly, how does the conceptual lens of techne as riyaz allow us to rethink the given notions of technology in the field of architectural practice and pedagogy? We explore these questions through conversations with six invited practitioners who have been working with different mediums across different geographies.
*speakers 2024*
Jan 05 Neha Kudchadkar <<
Jan 19 Sankalpa Sankalpa*
Feb 02 Afra Eisma
Feb 23 Sagarika Suri*
Mar 08 Asim Waqif*
Mar 22 Priyanka Narula
*sessions on campus
Technological Practice as Riyaz
How do we explore technology as a form of cultural practice through the conceptual lens of Riyaz? For us at SEA, Riyaz is a systematic way of practicing a form of art or craft with a long term commitment to not just learning it but also advancing the self and the form of practice in the process. It involves routine, discipline, engagements, isolation, diligence, play, repetitiveness and experimentation, through which one arrives at and struggles with the longue durée questions. As a practice–a technological practice, be it in architecture, music, sculpture, or engineering, riyaz involves a rhythmic engagement with the self, the technological matter (body, mud, brick, textile, strings, concrete) as well as the world within which the practice is located and towards which it is addressed.
This winter cycle SEA Conversations aims to explore technological practice or techne as riyaz. We ask: In riyaz, how does one engage with matter (molding, sculpting, weaving, screwing, ramming, kneading), which is not just material but also emotions, experiences, memories, histories, dreams and desires? What kinds of rhythms are devised between the practitioner, the matter, and the world in this practice of engagement? What kinds of routines, repetitions, and intensities constitute these rhythms? How does the material and the immaterial, shape the process and the rhythms? What kinds of asymmetries, imperfections, and unexpectedness emerge in this process? And what role do they play? How does the larger world, including the fields of art and architectural practices, within which the practice is located shape the riyaz? And lastly, how does the conceptual lens of techne as riyaz allow us to rethink the given notions of technology in the field of architectural practice and pedagogy? We explore these questions through conversations with six invited practitioners who have been working with different mediums across different geographies.
*speakers 2024*
Jan 05 Neha Kudchadkar <<
Jan 19 Sankalpa Sankalpa*
Feb 02 Afra Eisma
Feb 23 Sagarika Suri*
Mar 08 Asim Waqif*
Mar 22 Priyanka Narula
*sessions on campus
session 1
A
matter of practice /
by Neha Kudchadkar
A
matter of practice /
A
practice of thinking (through) matter
by Neha Kudchadkar
In this presentation visual and performing artist Neha Kudchadkar will talk through what it means to have a material-specific artistic practice. Through a series of open-ended questions that she sets for herself, she will discuss how the work frames and sometimes, rather oftentimes, defines the life she builds.
about
Neha Kudchadkar is a visual and performing artist currently living and working in rural Maharashtra. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, and the Faculty of Fine Art, M.S.U., Baroda. She has also been a student at the Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry. She has participated in residencies and shown her work in several exhibitions, including at the Centre d’Art Nauchatel, Switzerland, the Clayarch Gimhae Museum, South Korea, Mumbai Art Room and Project 88, Mumbai. She had her first international solo exhibition, All that is in this Thing at Display, Berlin and exhibited most recently at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in the Netherlands.
Neha has chosen to negotiate various roles – dancer, ceramicist, researcher, teacher, photographer, curator, sculptor, choreographer, administrator, collaborator, activist – that inform one another and broaden her approach as an artist and maker. She is co-founder of beej - a performing arts initiative, co-curator of the Indian Ceramics Triennale, and co-founder of The Innovation Champions’ Club, an innovation and design thinking platform for children.
This is a hybrid lecture series free and open to everyone across the world. The series is partly supported by Urban Centre Mumbai.
A SEA City Initiative.
about
Neha Kudchadkar is a visual and performing artist currently living and working in rural Maharashtra. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, and the Faculty of Fine Art, M.S.U., Baroda. She has also been a student at the Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry. She has participated in residencies and shown her work in several exhibitions, including at the Centre d’Art Nauchatel, Switzerland, the Clayarch Gimhae Museum, South Korea, Mumbai Art Room and Project 88, Mumbai. She had her first international solo exhibition, All that is in this Thing at Display, Berlin and exhibited most recently at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in the Netherlands.
Neha has chosen to negotiate various roles – dancer, ceramicist, researcher, teacher, photographer, curator, sculptor, choreographer, administrator, collaborator, activist – that inform one another and broaden her approach as an artist and maker. She is co-founder of beej - a performing arts initiative, co-curator of the Indian Ceramics Triennale, and co-founder of The Innovation Champions’ Club, an innovation and design thinking platform for children.
This is a hybrid lecture series free and open to everyone across the world. The series is partly supported by Urban Centre Mumbai.
A SEA City Initiative.
