Talks
Towards a New Commons: Technology, Media and Dalit Cultural Practices
Ananya Drishya, Aarti Sunder and Vishal Kumaraswamy
Image credits: Vishal Kumaraswamy/Marana
We hear from Vishal Kumaraswamy, an artist-curator about his practices and projects. Stemming from anti-caste working principles, his practice brings together traditional and experimental forms to investigate the entanglements of body, caste, language, technology, and society. He is interested in the power and potential of media technologies to imagine embodied, gestural ways of fostering the further development of Dalit cultural practices.
Central to their inquiry is the continuity of Dalit ritualistic and cultural practices, Marana (on funeral processions) and how these embodied performances are impacted by shifting urban spaces and technological intervention. Kumaraswamy investigates how technology can be repurposed to document and sustain these legacies rather than erase them. He creates space for new, collaborative modes of representation that challenge dominant urban narratives.
After the talk, Kumaraswamy discusses with Aarti Sunder, an artist whose interests lie within techno-politics, focusing on the study of infrastructure – contemporary labour practices, fiction, myth, digital-terrestrial play to expanded platform politics.
The event is presented as part of a monthly series that brings in artists and artistic practices rooted in Bengaluru, developed in collaboration with Ananya Drishya.
Bookings
Bookings are closed for this event.
Vishal Kumaraswamy
Vishal Kumaraswamy is artist-curator from Bengaluru, India working across text, film, sound, performance and computational arts. He has an MA in Photography from Central Saint Martins, London and his works have been shown at The Venice Biennale’s Research Pavilion, Hessel Museum Bard College, Contemporary Calgary, The Royal College of Art, SITE Gallery Sheffield, HKW Berlin and the Rencontres d’Arles 2023. Vishal’s work has recently been published in The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies. Vishal has been in residence with the US Consulate General Mumbai, Contemporary Calgary in Alberta, SAVAC Toronto, Vital Capacities videoclub UK, Onassis AiR and The Singapore Art Museum. He is a recipient of the second Han Nefkens Foundation South Asian Video Art Award for 2025, Australia Council for the Arts Transmitter Delhi X Darwin Grant, the Warehouse421 Artistic Research Grant and was a 2022-2024 Research Associate at CCA Derry~Londonderry.
Vishal’s curatorial practice is rooted within an anti-caste framework and is engaged in developing long term support infrastructures. He was the inaugural guest curator at Arts House, City of Melbourne for 2023 & 2024 for which he was shortlisted for the Creative Australia Asia Pacific Awards in Innovation, a British Council curatorial delegate at the 2023 Liverpool Biennial & an Independent Curatorial Intensive participant in 2024.
Artist’s image credit: Hannah Delon
Aarti Sunder
Aarti Sunder lives and works in India with moving image, sound, writing, drawing and painting. Her interests lie within techno-politics, focusing on the study of infrastructure and society – from contemporary labour practices, fiction, myth, digital-terrestrial play to expanded platform politics. She is interested in alternate readings into the idea of the platform amongst the human, non-human, and the almost-human. Another large area of interest are anecdotal and obscure stories of infrastructure and their relationship with forgotten actors. Aarti is currently working on a series of fictional stories on subterranean covert lives expertly navigating cities.
Recently 2025 Aarti exhibited at PAC Milano, Liquid Architecture, ZKU Berlin, Dystopia Sound Art Biennale, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Hayy Jameel, Akademie der Kunst Berlin, Singapore Biennale 2021, House of World Cultures, 1 Shanthiroad amongst other places. Aarti has been invited to speak at KHOJ, CSDS, The New School, NYC, MAP in Bengaluru, Westspace in Melbourne. She has also been awarded funding from various institutions to continue her research and practice. Her work has been the official nomination for Artist Film International 2024, 67th BFI London Film Festival in 2023 and Rencontres Film Festival at Paris in 2023.
