Heavy Time/s

Kalanjay Dhir

Opening 01.11.18 6-8pm
Artist Talks 23.11.18 6-7pm

Drawing from my culturally Hindu upbringing in a globalised world, the projects in Heavy Time/s conflate ancient iconographies and ideologies with emerging social theories and technologies. Heavy Time/s is a working model of cyclical time from an eschatological perspective in which apocalypse is not a finale to the world and our bodies as we recognise – but a promised spatiotemporal event on an anthropocentric timeline.

In the centre a boulder runs on a treadmill for as long as coal-fire powers the gallery. A Sisyphean task demoted (or promoted) to entertainment. The rock rolls for as long as it is observed and in turn becoming a faulty timepiece, like sand through the hour glass.*

The rest of the show departs from continental thought and compares the aesthetics of social technology with the ergonomics of ritual practice. The click in my thumb from scrolling through Twitter still fits the manual cycle of prayer beads (japa mala). And as I grow up and practice both as an artist and Hindu, I realise the harmony in conflict between anxiety and acceptance in the face of collective death.

The works in the show make up a broader anti-colonial research project that attempts to forecast the sociopolitical implications of the impending Singularity.
* So are the days of our lives.