Decolonization of Nature

Artist Talk of "Inner Lines"

The conception for the Video Installation and exhibition of „Inner Lines“ began with the issuing of the ‘Inner Line Permit’ from the Indian Government to allow inward travel into protected zones of indigenous communities in Northeast India, where the Brahmaputra river traverses through China, India, and Bangladesh, and pours into the Bay of Bengal.

Realized as an artistic multimedia installation of sound, moving and still images, found objects and archives, „Inner Lines“ leads us tactilely through a water world of rocky mountains and stunning panoramas of land, river and sacred spaces. The immersive experience of water is audibly combined with sounds of insects, electricity, cymbals, and unseen creatures, culminating into an environmental orchestra.

Human voices sometimes interrupt the entrancing experience as a specter of nostalgia for the past, anger at the present circumstance, or a bitter criticism of the coming future. Intimate portraits of people reveal the changing face of the area as gigantic dams appear strangely across the river and huge electric poles erect peculiarly over the blue sky. Examining the river’s water issues through a variety of documentation, „Inner Lines“ raises questions of a capitalist society, where the planet’s materials unavoidably become a resource for human consumption.

„Inner Lines“ ponders about the absurdity of human impact on the natural world.

As an ethnographic and documentary experimentation, „Inner Lines“ has been deployed since 2014 by Desire Machine Collective.

Considering „Inner Lines“ as a local testimony of nature-human relationship embedded in a global political and historical context, the artist talk Decolonization of Nature will carry out discourses on the development paradigm and modernization as well as indigenous worldviews and belief systems that define nature beyond the ‘nature-culture’ binary. DMC’s artists Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya will be in the conversation with Edda Kirleis, Bread for the world.

featuring:
- Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya, artists of Desire Machine Collective, India
- Edda Kirleis, Bread for the World , Berlin

Moderator: Klara Feldes, Humboldt University, Berlin

Registration is not required. Free entrance.

Place:
NON Berlin 아시아 현대미술 플랫폼
Chausseestr.11 / Entrance Tieckstr.
10115 Berlin-Mitte
Germany

Opening hours of the “Inner Lines” exhibition:
14 – 19:00 from Tuesday to Saturday, January 26 – February 9
NON Berlin, Chausseestr.11 / Entrance Tieckstr., 10115 Berlin-Mitte, Germany

More information http://calendar.boell.de/en/event/decolonization-nature

Picture: Detail from Inner Lines. Creator: DMC. All rights reserved.