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To Desire and to Trash

Vivan Sundaram in his latest presentation ‘Trash’, presented in the twin spaces of Project 88 and Gallery Chemould in Mumbai explores the economics and aesthetics of urban waste and value, re-defining rubbish, commodity disposal and sourcing, says Amrita Gupta Singh.

More than any other, this moment in history is one of urban transition. Urban spaces are of fundamental importance in the organization of economic production, distribution and exchange; in the structuring of social reproduction and cultural life; and in the allocation of money, power and social consumption. "Net worth equals self-worth." Under this definition, there is no such thing as enough. How does one define human want? Traditional measures of success such as integrity, honesty, skill, and hard work are increasingly passé and are gradually being supplanted by a simple, universally recognizable indicator of achievement- money. Social definitions in contemporary society revolve around consumption, its patterns and effects. If all consumers were reasonably well educated, if all had roughly equal purchasing power in the market, if the goods and services offered for sale were free from adulteration and defect, it might well be impertinent to make inquiry at all into human wants. We are encouraged to consume at every turn by the advertising industry by the commercialization of everything from sporting events to public spaces, and, insidiously, by the spread of the mass market into realms once dominated by family members and local enterprises. With the economy feeding into consumption modules, purchasing power and waste are intricately inter-linked. Within this is the dynamics to influence/control such consumption patterns by the privileged, while the non-privileged can only dream, leading to a tremendous waste within this system and irreparable class disparities. Alternately, the connections of waste, second-hand goods, recycling and value give rise to labour units and an unorganized work-force in the tertiary sectors, setting up premises about temporalities of possession and disposal and the differences which exist in relation to this across different commodity groups.

Vivan Sundaram in his latest presentation ‘Trash’, presented in the twin spaces of Project 88 and Gallery Chemould in Mumbai explores the economics and aesthetics of urban waste and value, re-defining rubbish, commodity disposal and sourcing. Recreating a massive architectural installation of garbage in his studio in Delhi which recalls panoramic and phantastical urban-scapes, and photographed from various vantage points, turns it into maze of horizontal and vertical constructs that reminds one of a science fiction movie. Multiple registers of visuality and dialectical relationships between the installation, digital photographs and videos relate to a matrix of variables which include functionality of the materials used but critically also involve design and aesthetic issues. Sundaram has been working with the subject of trash in such installations as the ‘Great Indian Baazar’ (1997) and ‘living.it.out.in.delhi’ (2005) and has worked collaboratively with Chintan, an NGO which works towards attaining the rights of rag-pickers and allied unorganized workforce. In this exhibition, Sundaram continues to explore “the social implications of waste at the core of which is the frenzy of global consumption; a deconstruction of the commodity form that recalls modernity’s fascination with recycled objects; and the changing aesthetic of a key modernist procedure of bricolage”. Further, such an exploration also gives rise to the argument of the spatialities of exchange, the geographies of location, first and second-hand markets and the center-margin metaphor.

Marginalized groups are involved in the sourcing of waste, walking through the relentless city, with heat, grime and sweat on their bodies, collecting rejects, living off meager income with the filthy city pavements serving as beds. These photographs also chart out the journey of the commodity, their value being ambiguous and mutable and they are open to cultural reinterpretation through shifts in taste and desire and through transformations in form or function through possession rituals, in this case, the possession being with the artist. The first impression from a close observation of fast growing cities' dynamics is of chaos. In effect, all sorts of spatial events take place simultaneously without an apparent relation to each other. Urban demolitions, skewed perspectives, land refills, migrations, displacements and manic real estate activities occur, and the photographs are bereft of human presence, bringing forth the paradoxical paradigms of the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of metropolises, where the ‘ideal imagined city’ versus the real is aesthetically dealt with, questioning what ‘growth’ and ‘progress’ would mean in the iconic cities of India. 

‘Twelve Bed Ward’ is a dormitory sized installation with rusty iron cots, the mattress consisting of an amalgamation of shoe soles that have seen the wear and tear of everyday burdens. The mattresses sag, with dim yellow bulbs above each bed, reminding one of night shelters, prisons, hospital wards, concentration camps and the variable dark dungeons of modern institutions; Constantly under some form of surveillance, the symbolized body becomes an object and means of labour. There is also an element of waiting, abandonment, emptiness; a melancholy emblematic of life lived on the peripheries.

Three video installations occupy another register of this exhibition; ‘Tracking’, a 10 minute video installation with two simultaneous projections reconstructs a elaborate night-scene, in a city-scape that was fabricated out of architectural models sourced from architects, combined with variable elements from Sundaram’s own installations. This piece addresses a collapse of the order of things via the juxtaposition of construction and debris, while a narrative is introduced via a man and a woman in an erotic ambience, negotiating the city at night.

‘Turning’  is a cerebral exploration of ascension of the Self, amidst explosions and swirling garbage components that slowly lose their form, collapsing, and falling, while  ‘Brief Ascension of Marian Hussain’, shows a young subaltern boy, engaged in moments of flight over piles of garbage, yet being brought down to his reality incessantly.

Sundaram’s art is a reflection of the times we live in, of fractures and ruptures that penetrate our daily urban existence, excavating like an archeologist recent pasts; in a post-modernist amalgamation of a variety of mediums including photography, found-objects, video and three dimensional constructs and collaborative projects, Sundaram posits questions of the role of the artist and authorship. Politically conscious and inter-textual in nature, his works constantly refer to social problems, popular culture, problems of perception, memory and history, where the contemporary is radically re-interpreted.