Elusive Truth, Evolving Medium: Evaluating Contemporary Political Documentary

Curated by Rattanamol Singh Johal

This exhibition uses four documentary films – Deepa Dhanraj’s Something Like A War (52 min, 1991), Monica Bhasin’s Temporary Loss of Consciousness (35 min, 2005), Anirban Datta’s .in for motion (59 min, 2008) and Simon Chambers’ Cowboys in India (76 min, 2009) – juxtaposed with a text excerpt from Sheba Chhachhi’s installation, Raktpushp (1997), the Blue Book (2008) series of photographs by Dayanita Singh and two short activist videos from Samadrusti TV to underscore the evolution of the documentary medium and its exhibition in art spaces. Contemporary political documentary is informed by recent large-scale political, social and economic upheavals and the corporate colonisation of mainstream media, responses to which demand new forms of expression and seek new techniques of expressing dissent, evading censorship and expanding circulation. In this milieu, Griersonian notions of documentary as defined by the medium’s conventional didacticism and employment of an “aesthetic of objectivity” have been gradually discarded in favour of non-linear narratives, personal histories, poetry, song, opinion, even propaganda, pointing to the existence of multiple/subjective truths and the complexities of representation.

The overarching idea is multi-faceted: to expand the horizons of socially and politically engaged art practice by including documentary films, previously unseen in a contemporary art space, within the exhibition installation; to encourage critical questioning around the inherent tension that arises from the exhibition of activist documentarians’ works as art; to meaningfully investigate the work’s format, content, duration and relationship with the viewer and the other works presented as part of the show.

Rattanamol Singh Johal is a graduate of the Macaulay Honours College of the City University of New York (CUNY) with double majors in Art History and Political Science. Having completed his postgraduate work at University of London’s Courtauld Institute where he investigated the interplay of aesthetics and politics in globalised contemporary art, Rattan returned to New Delhi in July 2011 for the IFA-Khoj Curatorial Residency, during which this exhibition was conceived. He has since participated in the Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive in New York City (November 2011) and was part of the curatorial team of KHOJLIVE12, an evening of live performance that coincided with the India Art Fair in January 2012.
The exhibition was conceptualised during the India Foundation for the Arts Curatorial Residency 2011 at KHOJ International Artists' Association, New Delhi.

Venue: British Council, Queens Gallery
Date: 10-15 February; 10AM to 9PM