Talk on 'Inheritance of Alphanumeric Characters'

CIS and Abhishek Hazra welcome you to a talk on 'Inheritance of Alphanumeric Characters', Abhishek's recent body of work currently on display at Gallery SKE, Bangalore. These works attempt to engage with the social history of science and the way the practice of science is deeply contextualised within the larger discourse of power and knowledge systems. It is also about negotiating with the 'inheritance' of discourses like Orientalism or Stalinism and finding ways of engaging critically with that legacy.

At one level, the title, 'Inheritance of Alphanumeric Characters' can be parsed as an allusion to the centrality of language in this entire process. It is also a reference to the phrase 'Inheritance of Acquired Characters', a popular one-liner on Lamarkism, an influential early 19th century theory of evolution that was discredited by the Darwinian-Mendelian paradigm. Abhishek uses multiple modalities - video and spoken word performance to artist's books and large-scale digital prints – to articulate his ongoing explorations.

Artist Profile:

Abhishek Hazra is a visual artist based in Bangalore. His work explores the intersections between technology and culture through the narrative device of a 'visual fable'. He is also interested in the social history of scientific practices, and his current, ongoing project attempts to explore the history of science research in colonial India. Abhishek works with animated shorts and digital slideshows that often integrate textual fragments drawn from fictional scenarios. He is also interested in the way in which the languages of science journalism and information visualisation participate in the complex dynamics of 'knowledge dissemination' and 'translation'. Recent shows include First Left, Second Right, a 3 person show at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York with Yamini Nayar and Kiran Subbaiah; Horn Please. Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art (Curated by Bernhard Fibicher and Suman Gopinath), Kunstmuseum Bern and Ghosts in the Machine and other Fables: an exhibition of video, sound and interactive works at Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi (Curated by Pooja Sood). A brief overview of some of his works can be found here: http://abhishekhazra.blogspot.com/