Leonardo Electronic Directory
ajaykumar
Email:
;ajaykumar@ajaykumar.com
Web sites: www.ajaykumar.com
www.pagesofmadness.com
www.shapes-design.com
A "poly-tekhne-kian" and academic at Goldsmiths, University of
London, I began in the sphere of performance research, which
organically evolved into concerns with composition of photographic,
cinematic, and eventually digital images, in relation to ontology.
This manifests now in what I term "poly-tekhne-kal" practice. I
prefer to use the term "poly-tekhne-kian," rather than 'artist', to
describe my practice as "tekhne" has a sense of practice and form
that is of more than art, one that incorporates philosophy, science,
and what one refers to today as "technology." I have a
non-dichotomised sense of the world where body is not in
contra-distinction to space; mind is not in contra-distinction to
body; the human being is not in contra-distinction to nature;
material is not in contra-distinction to 'spiritual'; and where there
is not an apprehension of or alienation from technology, nor one
which sees technology as inherently dissimilar to nature.
Tantric art reached maturation in South Asia around fifth century
C.E., manifesting in an integrated practice of dependent origination
of architecture-art-body-health-nature-philosophy-technology,
epitomised by rock cut edifices at Ellora. I am interrogating
possibilities of its relevance, and re-conception in contemporary,
post-human space-time.
Given tantric emphasis on all phenomena being sacred, my research is
also concerned with an art that may manifest in an everyday,
involving construction of gardens (interior and exterior), and of
furniture that others can manipulate: a "scenography of the home." A
practice that I aspire to generate could be considered to manifest
and exist "between forms, between minds, between spectators and
artists, between symbolic and physical environments, environments
that are constantly in flux."
Updated 2 November 2004
