Video documentation | David Chalmers Alesworth

“Desi Unday” Bilal Gunj

Posted on February 4th, 2010 by alesworth

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I went back to “Bilal Gunj” Lahore’s massive used car part market for a second sound sampling, a few days ago. This time with Huma’s 4 channel Zoom recorder.

In over an hour of walking the lanes I got reasonably varied ambient sound from the breakers, welders, paint-sprayers and a great many gas and kerosene burners heating food and tea. On this trip I realized there was a tremendous culture of food going on here.

Fish, tea, sweet-potatoes, chena, monpelli, carrot juice, egg-fried rice, subzi and dal, roti’s of every description and finally hot, boiled desi-unday. I’d almost given up on the eggs. I kept asking where the sellers were, because it was their presence selling these beautiful subtle-hued, small precious des-unday (local-eggs/free-range eggs) in the context of these ancient and smashed oily wrecks of cars and trucks that had given rise to the egg and engine photographs.

Suddenly they were there running through the lanes, two sellers I’d never seen before. They both carried padded bags to keep the boiled eggs warm, their cry was garam-desi-unday and I realized this would give a somewhat different spin on the photographs. They’d be read as engine heated eggs, not what I’d intended.

I’d intended the teeming living eggs as nature amongst the toxic waste of the man-made, the guts of the engines.

I produced a 12 minute mixed edit of the garam-unday criers and the ambient sounds on my stroll through the richly varied soundscape in the lanes of this market. Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh‘s shrine minarets can be heard throughout the work, a constant accompaniment at Bilal Gunj. This shrine to the patron saint of Lahore, lies right in front of the car market.

“966th URS Shareef is on 3 Feb 2010 Inshallah”

966 Urs Mubarak Of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh Ali Hajveri Will Held On 19 Safar al Muzaffar And 4 February 2010 (Approx) At Data Darbar , Near Bhatti Gate, Lahore. Pakistan
Days Remaining In URS Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh

His birthday is being celebrated today which a holiday in most of Punjab.

(….haven’t been able to upload this clip as yet)

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Mochi Gate, Old City, Lahore 29th November 2009

Posted on December 1st, 2009 by alesworth

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Over Bakra Eid in Lahore, November 2009, near Mochi Gate, Walled City.

Skinning a sheep, near Mochi Gate
(also see movie clip)

Sheep

Wiring and speakers

BA English

Nan Katai shop

Nan Katai’s

Carolyn Guertin

Bazaar life

Bazaar

Cleaning Goats Heads

Goats Heads

Processing goat parts

also see the movie clip

Dry Fruit Stall

Carolyn Guertin

Brain Computers

Brain Computers

Beautiful animals for Eid

Remains

Skins on a bike

Skins at the roadside

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Studio check-in 1st Nov. 2009.

Posted on November 3rd, 2009 by alesworth

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Some current thoughts and initiatives.<o:p></o:p>

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Walking the ganda-nala’s of Lahore<o:p></o:p>

I have approached a potential collaborator for this venture and we are in the process of discussing it. The open storm drains in this massive city of 7+ million (1998 census figures) provide the only channeling of sewage from homes to its ultimate discharge in the now dead river Ravi. There are no treatments plants. However the ganda-nala’s also create ecological corridors through the city where plant and animal life is left fairly undisturbed. The current heightened tension in the city is making any walking venture deeply problematic, let alone undertaking a walk through a highly suspicious no-mans land. I hope to undertake an initial walk (and documentation) within a few weeks. <o:p></o:p>

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The People’s Art Historical Garden Centre Project<o:p></o:p>

Completed 25^th October 2009 in collaboration with Adnan Madani. We have collaborated on several projects previously, notably “The Frankfurt School” video which is also covered in previous blog entries. See the newly added page of documentation and narrated video. Akbar Naqvi’s book “Image and Identity” (Oxford, 1997) is systematically dismantled and converted into useful paper bags. It is unbound and liberated from it’s burden of assumed authority. A reclamation, a reinterpretation and dissemination. Even an insemination (seeds are added to each art-historical bag). Like seeds themselves it is finally disseminated to the public of Lahore. <o:p></o:p>

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Eden project<o:p></o:p>

I have yet to locate specialist input for this project and I now see it as being a much longer term initiative. I hope at least part of it may be realized by next summer’s residency.<o:p></o:p>

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Berlin Collaboration 2009-2010<o:p></o:p>

I have sent out initial emails towards this collaboration. It is intended that a dual project be negotiated that comes to fusion and fruition in Berlin next summer. Something that involves horticultural practices in the cities of Lahore and Berlin.<o:p></o:p>

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Readings, recent and in progress, 1st Nov. 2009<o:p></o:p>

Tim Richardson. Vista, The Culture and Politics of Gardens.<o:p></o:p>

K. Helphand. Defiant Gardens.<o:p></o:p>

Khan. The Gardener.<o:p></o:p>

Ian Sinclair. Hackney that Rose-Red Empire.<o:p></o:p>

Reza Aslan. How to Win a Cosmic War.<o:p></o:p>

Charles Darwin. The Formation of Vegetable Mould.<o:p></o:p>

Foucault. Several Readers and The Order of Things.<o:p></o:p>

Isenberg. The Nature of Cities.<o:p></o:p>

Belting. Garden of Earthly Delights.<o:p></o:p>

Jellicoe. The Landscape of Man.<o:p></o:p>

Coverley. Psychogeography.<o:p></o:p>

Reynolds. On Guerrilla Gardening.<o:p></o:p>

Allen. Kipling Sahib.<o:p></o:p>

Solnit. As Eve Said to the Serpent.<o:p></o:p>

Driver. Nash. Landing.<o:p></o:p>

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Research<o:p></o:p>

I will be contacting Kenneth Helphand for my research on the ”Post-Colonial Garden”. This is currently under negotiation with my mentor concerning it’s whole approach to the subject.<o:p></o:p>

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“P.A.H.G.C.P.”

Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by alesworth

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A collaborative project with Adnan Madani, in Karachi. We also collaborated last year on the video work, “The Frankfurt School”. Here we again made use of the skills of Mahmood the book-binder.

This is the most recent completed project. Participating in the current group exhibition (curated by Mehreen Murtaza and Umer Butt) at Greynoise Gallery, Lahore.
In the show entitled “Patrons of Oh! My God i can buy Art!” opens 25th October 2009.

Our work is entitled:
<meta name=”Title” content=””> <meta name=”Keywords” content=””> <meta equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″> <meta name=”ProgId” content=”Word.Document”> <meta name=”Generator” content=”Microsoft Word 2008″> <meta name=”Originator” content=”Microsoft Word 2008″> <link style=”font-weight: bold;” rel=”File-List” href=”file://localhost/Users/davidalesworth/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml”> <style> </style> “People’s Art Historical Garden Centre”
A project of P.A.H.P.
(People’s Art and Historical Project)
David Chalmers Alesworth and Adnan Madani
Variations: 1/12
Recycled paper and live seeds.
October 2009

PAHP: Tomorrow’s History, Today.

“The P.A.H.G.C. aims to create a new and green space for supra-critical reappraisal of the use-value of art history (as written from the point of view of colonial and post-colonial
govern-mentality), by converting the plastic objects of art history into objects of everyday fetish use for the subjects of history. The dissemination of alter-knowledge and the insemination of alter-culture are the short, medium and long term goals of this project, which conforms closely to the will of the people while correspondingly attempting to shape the contours of that will and its future forms.”

David Alesworth
Adnan Madani
Lahore
Oct. 2009

Video documentation and context for “P.A.H.G.C.P”

Mahmood with a collection of raw material.
Oxford University Press’s “Image and Identity” by Akbar Naquvi.
In this book he describes my practice in the mid 1990’s as being more orientated towards
horticulture than art making.

Iqbal Geoffrey to whom this work is in part homage.

Mahmood at work with editioned works behind him.

In the gallery prior to the opening.

The rosta of participating artists in this group show.

Gallery goers and Mahmood at work producing useful paper bags from this troubled text.
Gallery visitors were encourgaded to take away free art-historical bags containing live vegetable seeds.

The work place, finished bags to the right.

The seeds in the foreground are added to each bag.
They are egg plant, melons, cabbage and chillies.

The twelve editioned works, each bag contains some live seeds,
the local seed packets are inserted into each art-historical bag.
Each bag/seed packet combination is mounted on a facsimile herbarium sheet
and framed with acid free archival materials.

This is the hebarium mount for each of the editioned works.

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“A Walk in the Woods” Berlin, 2009.

Posted on November 1st, 2009 by alesworth

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Arno Breker’s studio in the woods.

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Transart Submission: 15th June 2009

Posted on June 14th, 2009 by alesworth

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Artists statement, June 2009

The finished project consists of a number of interrelated works, spanning a variety of media produced throughout the year. There are thirty seven large, monochrome metal framed digital prints of images derived from the Record Room, shoots I undertook in Karachi’s vehicle record archives over the last year. One large digital print “The Garden of Babel” which references scientific accession labels for plants from horticultural gardens in Austria and Pakistan. A large scale rectangular stack of 180 steel cubes, each 14” x 14” x 28” in matt lacquered passivated mild steel (11’6”h x 14’ x 9’4” rectangle) a mutable installation/intervention at 11’6” high. This refers to both the Kaaba, modernist sculpture and early nuclear technologies. Over this past year I have produced a series of works in Lahore, Pakistan, that explore the interlinking of the autobiographical with the public. This takes the form of aspects of my personal history woven into outward issues, such as that of post-coloniality in the “Garden of Babel”, or nuclear power and nuclearization, weaponisation in “12.2.42”. The latter work was also conceived to be used for public interventions in the city of Lahore and surrounding countryside. The prevailing security situation in Pakistan made this impossible. Instead the work was brought into my home, where it displaced the living spaces of the house. This became a broader metaphor for invasion and imposition, right into the home itself. This imposition in question may be read as the fall-out of technologies, be they nuclear poisons or otherwise, or even the mental poison of the always present threat of nuclear war, in this, the worlds number one hotspot for a potential nuclear conflict. The imposition on the living space of my home may also be considered as ideological, and it is no accident that the structures produced are essentially Kaaba like. Pakistan is currently in a state of low intensity civil war, it’s nuclear assets are the whole worlds concern which we hear of daily in the international media. This war is a supposedly religious war, certainly ideological and I find myself particularly visible in the midst of a divided nation that is not my original home. Yet in Pakistan there is no public awareness, debate, protest or education on the complex issues of nuclearization. Karachi is in the process of ordering four more domestic nuclear power stations this year. This period globally has been dubbed “the beginning of the second nuclear age”. The other thread of my work has been the more intimate and directly autobiographical in the form of video.

Research Synopsis 2009

I have read widely in the diverse genre of autobiography, it’s associated theory and criticism. I have also read a selection of autobiographical works from St Augustine’s “Confessions” to Damien Hirst’s “On my way to Work”. I have considered the autobiographical in art history and contemporary art practice. I have retrospectively considered some of my own work over the past thirty years in the light of an autobiographical reading. In conclusion I have proposed that all creative work is essentially autobiographical in nature.

Draft Proposals for 2009-2010:
Research Proposal 1.

As “A survey of autobiographical tendencies in contemporary art practice in Pakistan” I would be researching attitudes to the autobiographical in contemporary Pakistani art, across the board from contemporary miniature to teaching approaches in various art schools in the country and video and installation based practices. Thorough interviews and photographs, possibly video documentation too. Perhaps producing some Podcasts in the process. I have worked on art and autobiography in my research of the past 12 months. (History, interviews, conclusions. Post-coloniality, censorship, narrative, contemporary miniature, feminist and gay perspectives, gender specificity. The role of galleries, institutions and collectors in shaping art criterion. Art education and the international audience.)

Studio Practice: The Autobiographical and the public.
In relation to the above enquiry and as an extension of my practice in 2008-2009 I would continue to make autobiographical work. I see the task in hand now to be a full integration of my life, as outsider and “other” in Pakistan with broader societal and global concerns. The thread of this may be taken up from the “Domestic Displacements” work I undertook in Lahore in May and June of 2009.

Draft Proposals for 2009-2010:
Research-Proposal 2.

Alternatively under the banner of “A Taxonomy of Eden” I will be researching gardens and parks in contemporary Pakistan. This will include varying attitudes to the idea of nature, wilderness and the paradise garden. Also the legacy of aging colonial park spaces. Interviewing a cross section of contemporary society from career gardeners in Lahore’s parks, agricultural workers, religious scholars (and lay practitioners from various religions and sects) the educated and the less educated in the city and countryside of Lahore and Karachi (possibly further afield also). From nursery owners, the head of the Punjab Horticultural Authority to jobbing residential gardeners in the Defence housing authorities of Karachi and Lahore. This will also follow the format of recordings, translations, transcriptions and analysis. Also photography and some video. I work as a freelance horticultural consultant in Pakistan and have done so for the past 21 years. My clients currently include Agha Khan Cultural Services Pakistan, with whom I am working on several projects, including the uplift of the North Circular Park belt around Lahore’s old city. (Sacred Texts. Garden Design. Garden History. Landscape. Popular Culture. Decorated Transport. Trees on the edge between nature and culture. Motifs. Carpets. Ageing colonial public parks in Lahore. The culture of the Mali.)

Studio Practice: A Taxonomy of Eden.
Building upon “The Garden of Babel” 2009 as a format I would initially work towards examining various sacred texts in translation. Those of the Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam and possibly others in the broad grouping in relation to notions of the garden of Eden. In this respect I would be particularly focusing on plants mentioned there. Using this with allied horticultural enquiry, and in consultati0n with various scholars I would build a taxonomy of Eden. The works may be grided digital prints of botanical and zoological accession labels, as are to be found in Zoos and botanical gardens. I would have to create reasonable approximations of specifically mentioned plants of Eden, I would aim for around 180-300 plants per work. I would then make the labels in etched plastic laminates, as authentic labels. Photograph them in particular settings, as I have learnt from the making of “The Garden of Babel”. These would then be composed as grids and printed as large C-prints. How the work may play out in other forms such as texts, woven carpets or illuminated manuscripts or their digital equivalents would remain to be seen.

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‘Half-Life” Video Documentation

Posted on April 15th, 2009 by alesworth

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A video survey of my part of the show. Everything is in monochrome except for the “Garden of Babel” which is composed of horticultural accession labels, in polychromed plastic units. Repetitive units are everywhere, the surrounding Record Room images, the steel cubes and the horticultural tags.

The installation of “12.2.42”, it took six hours to build and then to adjust and rebuild again.

This is an autobiography through formalism. This is minimalism gone bad. Minimalism having no resonance in Pakistan. The disintegration of an idea,the loss of an ideal. Also the idea of cheap clean nuclear energy, once discredited and now again being entertained as a lesser evil in this carbon obsessed age. Karachi has commissioned four new nuclear plants this year.

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Tag ‘Video documentation’