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  Berlin, Germany - From 19 September to 16 November 2003,body.city - New Perspectives
from India presents, for the first time in Germany, a comprehensive overview
of the contemporary Indian art scene - ranging from performance, concerts,
conferences, films, readings to Youth Workshops. A group of renowned Indian
curators are busy putting the final touches on the fall program at the House of
World Cultures.
At the heart of this unique event are two major exhibitions featuring India's
visual culture:Indian Popular Culture. 'The Conquest of the World as Picture',
which places the development of the iconography of everyday Indian life in its
cultural and historical context. By way of contrast, subTerrain: artworks in
the cityfold focuses on contemporary Indian art.
The megalopolises of Mumbai/Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata/Calcutta
have not only provided India with some of the largest cities in the world, but
also cultural centres of increasing global significance. Worldwide audiences are
already familiar with Bollywood, Kollywood, Indian design, or Bhangra Beat - now
firmly a part of global pop culture. Over the past few decades, India's
megalopolises have also become home to a whole new generation of exceptional
artists and intellectuals, whose works open up new perspectives on the many
questions raised by the vast social changes India has and continues to undergo.
These artists are engaged in a process of translating India's unparalleled
visual culture and classic 'body arts' into contemporary forms of expression.
body.city explores facets of contemporary India both in its popular
and intellectual forms. Curators Jyotindra Jain, Anuradha Kapur, Geeta Kapur and
Ravi Vasudevan, some of the leading figures of India’s avant-garde, are
joined in this undertaking by Sandeep Bhagwati from Germany. All have
deliberately selected India's urban centres as focal points of a programme which
reflects the complex relations between globalisation, local traditions, and
newly-designed living spaces while providing a framework for interaction between
cutting-edge art productions, spiritually-oriented performance techniques,
traditional arts and crafts, cinema and pop culture.
body.city - New Perspectives from India is part of the
Asia-Pacific-Weeks 2003 - Focus India. It is supported by the
Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin.
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