Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

This award winning work creates discursive situations to facilitate in-depth and contemplative observation of the environmental decay of transitive sites in India, using media intervention and interactivity. The project aims to delineate the processes of decay and destruction of pastoral landscapes in the developing economies and societies. Taking point-of-departure from a perspective in the personal experience of forgetting and loss, being a native of the area myself (the artist), this large-scale project intends to reflect upon the interpenetration between locative and global cultures, decay in environmental and climatic integrity, disappearance of indigenous traditions and lapses in collective memory within the landscapes, by production and showcasing of the inter-media installation work. With a media anthropological approach, the project frames the gradual transfiguration with the help of media convergence, staging augmented and site-specific interpenetration between sound, video and still images. The work has been developed through a meticulous collection of audiovisual materials from various Indian locations in extensive fieldworks supported by Prince Claus Fund Amsterdam. This collection has been forming a digital archive expended for realizing the work.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is an Indian-born sound/media artist, researcher, writer and theorist, currently based in Europe. Chattopadhyay’s work questions the materiality, site-specificity and object-hood of sound, and addresses the aspects of contingency, contemplation, mindfulness and transcendence inherent in listening. His artistic practice intends to shift the emphasis from “object” to “situation” in the realm of sound. His sound-works are published by Gruenrekorder (Germany) and Touch (UK). Chattopadhyay is a Charles Wallace scholar, Prince Claus grantee and Falling Walls fellow, and has received several residencies and international awards, notably a First Prize in Computer and Electronic Music category of Computer Space festival 2014, Sofia, and an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011, Linz. Appearing in numerous exhibitions, concerts, conferences and festivals, Chattopadhyay’s sound and video works have been exhibited, performed or presented widely in Europe and Asia. Chattopadhyay has graduated from India’s national film school, specializing in sound, completed a Master of Arts degree in new media/sound art from Aarhus University, Denmark, and obtained a PhD degree in sound studies involving practice-based artistic research from Leiden University, The Netherlands.