TAKE on art - January - June 2017

In this issue

"The current issue of TAKE proposes a careful examination of the myth-lore and utopias with the view to excavate disused frames and imaginative designs that would help us build a metaphorical ark preparatory for the times of ecological turbulence that lies ahead. This has translated into an anthology of experimental/utopian writings seeking to revise and ethicise the existing relational configuration between the human and the more-than-human with a specific focus on the ‘botanies of desire’ and dietetics.
The modern kitchen — how we think of kitchens, what they do, and how we can reconceive their role, and the role they play in bringing people together — is constantly being revisited in contemporary cultural and artistic practice. Food has become a hotly contested discursive entity in the current geopolitics — from the homogenising rhetoric leveled at the European Federation of Food Banks to the hegemonising politics of the biotechnology giants like Monsanto. As a consequence, food and botany are the two domains that this issue of TAKE undertakes to investigate in order to churn novel ways of thinking about ecology." - Editorial Excerpt by Bhavna Kakar

With contributions by
Adwait Singh | AES+F | Ana María Bresciani | Ashish Kothari | Bhavna Kakar | Bronislaw Szerszynski | Chloé Wolifson | Chus Martínez | D. Graham Burnett | Elin Már Øyen Vister | Fernanda Garcia | Gopal Mirchandani | Gopika Nath | Gulammohammed Sheikh | Heather Davis | Himanshu Kadam | John Xaviers | Jyothidas K. V. | Kamayani Sharma | Katharina Domscheit-D’souza | Liv Bugge | Manisha Gera Baswani | Mario D'Souza | Nabil Ahmed | Owais Husain | Paroma Maiti | Radhika Mulay | Ramya Sharma | Ravi Agarwal | Rita Datta | Ritika Kochhar | Sasha Engelmann | Stefanie Hessler | Sugata Ray | SymbioticA (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr) | T. J. Demos | Tausif Noor | The Center for Genomic Gastronomy (Zack Denfeld and Cathrine Kramer) | Tomás Saraceno | Wood Roberdeau

The Body of the Crime

How can critical spatial practice today make invisible crimes visible? Let me be clear by giving an explicit environmental meaning to this singular question. The invisible or the less visible crimes of environmental violence are those committed against nature and subaltern social groups for the accumulation of capital. In the conflict between the economy and the environment the cost of capitalism is an increasing output of toxic waste. The fact that nature is still cheap is not a sign of abundance but “a result of a given distribution of property rights, power and income”1. The evil twin of the territorial scale displacement of people is the massive displacement of pollution to other nations. As animals mark their territories with stinking urine, humans claim territory by polluting the earth.2 Human species have come to appropriate the earth through pollution. 

4 mins

Future Imaginaries for When the World Feels Like Heartbreak

I awoke the day after the United States election and my heart hurt. I felt devastated and afraid. My breath seemed to be constricted. Stepping outside was like stepping into a land in mourning. People looked sad and tired and depressed. I went to the wrong campus searching for the class I was meant to guest teach. When I began to come out of this stunned stupor, I started to realise that my silences, my inaction, my disbelief in the depth of what Michelle Alexander calls racial indifference, coupled with renewed and blatant white nationalism, had led to this moment.1 In the weeks since that day, there has been a huge amount of mobilising in the face of renewed white supremacy and corporatocracy. Mobilising for what, precisely, we cannot yet be sure. But it doesn’t look good. And everyday it seems to get worse. What has become clearer and clearer, for me, in the wake of the election is the deep entwinement of the twin formations that are often treated as separate phenomenon. That is, white supremacy and ecological disaster. I want to make a case in the brief space here that racial and environmental justice cannot be separated, but are part of an entangled matrix of capitalism and colonialism that is killing the majority of the inhabitants on this earth.2. 

2 mins

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TAKE on art Magazine Description:

TAKE on art, the leading art magazine in India published bi-annually from New Delhi since 2009, comprehensively covers, reports and critiques art and cultural events from India and abroad. Led by Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Bhavna Kakar, TAKE follows a critical approach to the larger discourse on art through curated issues with contributions by leading writers and critics from across the globe. The magazine has been invested in sustaining critical writing practices in India not just through its own capacity as a publication but also by organising initiatives that try to generate discourse, and keep conversations alive. In the past, the publication has organised writing workshops under the TAKE on Writing series as well as hosted the TAKE TALK series. Significant projects in this direction include TAKE on Residency, in collaboration with IFA at 1 Shanthi Road, Bangalore in 2013, TAKE on Writing, Critic-Community: Contemporary Art Writing at Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts, Goa in 2014 and more recently, Take on Writing - Critical Writing Ensemble (CWE) Baroda Chapter at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda in December 2015 and the CWE Dhaka Chapter, conceptualised by Katya Garcia Anton, in collaboration with OCA, Norway at the Dhaka Art Summit in 2016 supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council. The most recent TAKE on Writing initiatives included The Book – The New Writing Group, a workshop led by Chus Martínez and Ingo Niermann supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and The Book – Ensemble, both held in New Delhi in December 2016.

The magazine has travelled internationally to events such as Art Basel, Art Basel HK, Art Basel Miami, Dhaka Art Summit and Asia Triennale Manchester, as well as collaborated with landmark events locally such as Experimenter Curator's Hub (2011 - 2016), Insert 2014, Sarai Reader 09: Episode 1, 2 and 3, Amrita Sher-Gil National Art Week and Delhi Photo Festival.