Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Duration of stay: 5 June to 10 July 2024
In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger
Pallavi Paul’s practice interrogates how the idea of ’truth’ is produced and imaged in public life. Paul is particularly interested in poetic explorations of the tension between the document and its aesthetic utterance – the documentary. Her most recent solo exhibition took place as part of the Forum Expanded Berlinale at Savvy Contemporary (2022). Her work has been exhibited in venues including Berlinische Galerie (2022), The International Film Festival of Rotterdam (2021), HKW (2020), The Rubin Museum (2019), Beirut Art Centre (2018), AV Festival (2018, 2016), Contour Biennale (2017), Tate Modern (2013). Paul received her PhD in Cinema Studies from JNU, Delhi. She was the 2021 Visual Arts Fellow at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Her recent residencies include Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2023) with a solo exhibition following the residency and Alserkal Arts Residency (forthcoming, 2024).
Research project: A Speaking Fragment: Revisiting Indexicality
As a part of the ConTrust fellowship I seek to look at the ways in which the link between medical discourse, documentary and visual culture is being rearticulated with a pressing urgency in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This work builds on my doctoral thesis titled ‘From Ideology to the Fragment: Documentary Reimagined’ which interrogates the relationship between documentary and public truth in India. I argue that the contract between documentary, authenticity and truth has had to renew itself across various decades under the critical pressures exerted by film technologies, censorship regimes, changing political scenarios and channels of circulation. The implications it has then for democracy and social systems is crucial. Some of these ideas also undergird my current solo exhibition at Gropius Bau titled ‚How Love Moves‘.
Selected publications:
“Objects as Exhibits: Performances of the Forensic.” In Acts of Media. Los Angeles and Delhi: Sage, 2022
“De-authored Fragments: Understanding Pandemic Media.” Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 12, no. 3.
“A Dividual Line Into The Past: Ten Fragments.” Contemporary Condition – the Last Resident. Edited by Verina Gfader. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019.
“The Work of Freedom in a World of Images.” Documentary Now. Marg (September 2018).
Events
5 June 2024 – 7. June 2024
Conference „Publicity and the Political in the Long 20th Century“
For further information: Click here….