Comparing Experimental Cinemas

Comparing Experimental Cinemas is a British Academy-funded symposium, screening and research and practitioners' network meeting, exploring histories and genealogies of Asian experimental cinema. This curatorial initiative took place in Bangalore, organised by Ingawanij (CREAM) and Shai Heredia (Experimenta India, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology) as joint holders of the BA's International Mobility and Partnership grant. This research and curatorial network project was initiated to map histories and modes of artists’ moving image across localities in Asia, and their links beyond, and to theorise the regionality of experimental film and artists' moving image. Ingawanij and Heredia held the symposium and network meetings in Bangalore in order to facilitate the establishing of a network of exchange and support among practitioners and researchers, who are largely based in the Asia-Pacific region. The symposium consisted of two days of illustrated public talks and screening programmes by academics, curators, artists, festival directors and researchers of experimental film, video art and artists' moving image from India, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and the UK. Participants included: artists Nguyen Trinh Thi, Siew Wai Kok, Priya Sen, Anuradha Chandra, Ayisha Abraham, Kush Badhwar; curators/researchers/producers: Lalitha Gopalan, Jangwook Lee, Benjamin Cook, Shanay Jhaveri, Mark Williams, Hitomi Hasegawa, Yuki Aditya. Accompanying the symposium were exchange and discussion sessions, restricted to the participants, designed to consolidate and look for possibilities to extend the network of grassroots experimental filmmakers and artist moving image practitioners and educators in Asia, of which Ingawanij and Heredia are a key part. Ingawanij also presented her curated screening programme Reuse, Retell. This screening programme highlights various ways in which artists in Asia continue to use strategies of re-editing, re-assembling and conceptual montage to evoke otherwise imperceptible experiences in turbulent times. Reuse, Retell 19 December 2014 Shrishti School of Art, Design and Technology A Soldier's Song Sample Experiment, Nguyen Trinh Thi, 2011, Vietnam A Brief History of Memory, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, 2010, Thailand Untitled 1, from the series 'Eight Men Lived in the Room,' Hyewon Kwon, 2010, South Korea Air Cowboy, Tanatchai Bandasak, 2010, Thailand And I Make Short Films, SNS Sastry, 1968, India Time of the Last Persecution, Taiki Sakpisit, 2012, Thailan