Zapping us All: The Installation Form

Speakers: Shanta Gokhale, Ranjit Hoskote, Jerry Pinto and Abhay Sardesai

December 22, 1994 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

The forms of contemporary art often bewilder those who were brought up to appreciate paintings along traditional lines, as surfaces within frames. The installation, the happening, the conceptual artwork, the assemblage: all these forms of expression, which evolved from the Dadaist experiments of Duchamp, Schwitters and Tzara, are today the leitmotifs of postmodernist art, which is an art of discontinuity and disturbance engineered by playful surfaces and unorthodox techniques.

In this program, the participants will address such issues as: When and why did the painted image within the frame begin to seem inadequate to artists? How did the early installators react to such dominant institutions as the gallery and the academy? What models did these artists formulate, in order to break out of the sacred space of the exhibition, and include the moods and materials of popular culture in the rituals of high art?