In the second edition of art and science residency at Khoj Studios, artists create a diverse laboratory where sound, video, text, drawing, biology, physics and chemistry co-exist
Small synthesisers whose sound and light emissions fluctuate in response to human touch, glass slides of blood stains used to create prints, shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita recontexualised in a video work and images of artefacts sourced from museums. Everything here has been uniquely presented to bring out the co-relation between science and art. In the second edition of the Art and Science Residency, hosted by Khoj International Artists’ Association at Khoj Studios, the artists explore the crossover between art and science by creating a diverse laboratory where sound, video, text, drawing, biology, physics and chemistry co-exist. The participating artists are Jaden Hastings (USA), lalinthorn Phencharoen (Thailand), Paribartana Mohanty (Delhi) and Shreyasi Kar and Bidisha Das (Bengaluru).
Hastings calls herself a “bio-hacker” and is a bio-medical researcher with multiple science degrees and a degree in fine arts. She says: “Bio-hacking is a movement that aims to demystify biotechnology, increases awareness and contextualise its potential to a wide audience outside professional labs. It allows the artist and the common citizen to not only participate but also critically evaluate the contemporary state of scientific research. I want to reinforce that scientific research and convey that experiments can take place outside fancy institutions and without expensive equipment.”
For this residency, she has used her blood (stains on glass slides) mixed with pigments and metallic oxides. Once projected on Giclee prints, they look like abstract art imagery. There will also be a video showing the movement of blood cells played to self-composed music. This is to interpret that protein cells are unique to each one of us, almost like a metaphor of our life cycle. “This is in tune with my previous hacks such as ‘decellularisation’ or holographic projection of scientific data,” she says. She carried with herself a blue ribbon printed with the Genome sequence of the first tree to be sequenced by science. Here, she tied this ribbon around some trees in Sanjay Van in an attempt “to bind the world through science and art”.
Phencharoen has been working in dual professions, as an art theory instructor in Silpakorn University and an artist. Interested in the relation of art and science, she especially creates artworks with combination of essences from both sides of the brain, rational and irrational or objective and subjective conditions. Her artworks are based on conceptual drawings, reflecting negative human behaviour in society. The drawings are executed with traditional techniques, like ink, silverpoint and graphite on paper, trying to imitate classic scientific and medical illustrations. Her work lalinlab is an installation that portrays her ideas and methodologies. She uses text, scientific drawings, specimens of earth and water collected from around Khoj.
Mohanty has created a video titled The Miniaturist which takes its reference from the famous physicist J Robert Oppenheimer reciting shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita in the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust. Mohanty calls a physicist a ‘miniaturist’ who can see beauty in the smallest detail — in this case, an atom. “The scientist has a sense of guilt, which makes his performance more complex. Sometimes it seems Oppenheimer is searching a way out from his trauma by reciting the spiritual text but simultaneously defending or justifying the evil atomic experiment and violence on the basis of dharma and karma, alluding with what Krishna suggested Arjuna. I want to take the video documentation as raw material to think and work further. What will happen if people are asked to perform like Oppenheimer in front of the camera and to read and recite a text like Bhagavad GitaIJ The project focusses on ‘reciting’ as a performative action,” he says. To do this, he has invited friends to rewrite the text from Gita which will be used as part of the video and has also juxtaposed images of destruction post the nuclear bombing with images of ancient civilisation sourced from Hiroshima Museum, Japan and National Museum, Delhi respectively.
Shreyasi Kar and Bidisha Das are collaborating to create an eclectic laboratory that has several mini-labs inside it — bio lab, electronics lab, sound lab, photo lab, all using plants as the basis of experimentation. They say: “Our aim is to explore the relationship between man and nature and reflect on how plants react to human environment. Our current work is inspired by the work of the polymath JC Bose, we would like to use Bose’s experiments with plants as a starting point for our experiments. Using simple electronic devices, which can be built in a community setting, we will construct a public laboratory in which we will attempt to open a sonic communication channel with plants and later expand our instruments to include other non-human actors.”