Anonymous Kins

Anonymous Kins

On March 20, 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown with four hoursnotice, leaving around 100 million migrant workers stranded. As food and money at their disposal dwindled, they were forced to return to their hometowns and villages, the only places offering a chance for a dignified life. With public transport halted, many walked over 1,000 km. Others cycled, hitchhiked, or paid for private trucks. Tragically, many died from hunger, exhaustion, accidents, or criminal negligence from the railways. Some even took their own lives. Their deaths, much like their lives, remained largely anonymous. Apart from brief social media outrage, their stories went unnoticed and unmourned.

 

Anonymous Kins is an audio-visual installation seeking to confront the murky moral grounds of an unequal and unjust society while remembering those who are never acknowledged. It also reminds us of the intangible, ungraspable, yet inescapable contemporary reality where dehumanization is a constant act and not every life is valued the same.

 

Artists statement

Driven by curiosity about the systems of ideas transmission, my work stems from reflections on behavioral sciences, biological evolution, and cultural trends that shaped my critical thinking and my practice. As an audio-visual artist, I explore the intricate narratives of social, political and ethical issues in an attempt to bring to life an art form that exists in a symbiotic relationship with epistemology.

While grappling with the paradox of human existence, I strive to extend my creative and critical perspectives to explore the realm of unspeakable non-human beauty, not confined within anthropocentric normative parameters. In a world full of fiction, I wish to extend my research to imagine and create realities beyond the obsolete logic of progress, bringing out marginalized and subaltern perspectives.

 

Bio

Born in 1998 in India, Vivek Jain is an audiovisual artist and multidisciplinary researcher. He completed his masters education in Cinematography under the Joint Masters Program Viewfinder, led by the eminent European film institutes IADT, Dublin, SzFE, Budapest and BFM, Tallinn. As a storyteller, his current practice seeks to re-imagine cinema as an expansive medium, drawing from contemporary art practices and employing multi/transdisciplinary research. His filmography is a mixed blend of narrative, documentary and experimental works, exhibited and recognized in numerous international film festivals. He also runs the Innominate Collective, a weekly workshop for Indian film and art practitioners exploring shared curiosities in all possible disciplines, whether cognitive science, social history, geopolitics or neurocinematics.

 

@innominatevivek

innominatevivek.com

 

innominatevivek.com