Leonardo Electronic Directory

ajaykumar

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