AMAR KANWAR

At Documenta 12 he presented the video installation The Lightning Testimonies (2007), in which the traumatic experiences of women during the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 are taken as a point of departure for a complex survey which explores the narratives of sexual violence in political conflicts in the Indian region. Currently Kanwar is completing “The Torn First Pages”, a new body of work on the political and humanitarian situation in Burma (Myanmar). Different parts of “The Torn First Pages” have been exhibited in the last year and by the middle of 2008 the series will begin to travel as a whole.

Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen: For a few years you have been working on “The Torn First Pages”, a series of works that focus on Burma: on the military regime, the repressive conditions of Burmese daily life and their struggle for democracy. In The Face (2005) for instance, you literally reveal the face of military repression by zooming in on the features of General Than Shwe who, since 1992, is the supreme head of the Burmese military dictatorship. It is based on film footage clandestinely shot at a ceremony in 2004 at Rajghat, the funeral site of Gandhi in India, where Shwe paid tribute to Gandhi by tossing rose petals over the site where he was cremated. General Than Shwe is known for the distance he keeps from cameras.
The video is a subversion of the official representation of power as it ends in the almost comical faster and faster petal throwing by the junta leader. By taking Shwe’s visit to Indiaas the subject of your video, you obviously criticize the newly established ties between the New Delhi and Rangoon governments.
Could you shed some light on your interest in the activist movement in Burma? How and when did you get in touch with the resistance and how do you collect your material?
Amar Kanwar: I began working on a film project about the Burmese resistance in 2002-03. The resistance has been on for many years, with several struggles of great courage and amazing resilience but still largely ignored by the international community. It has also been a political movement that is complex and difficult to understand.
“The Torn First Pages” is a work in progress consisting of a series of films, some short andsilent pieces and others longer in duration. They are all filmed outside of Burma. So far, the series is made up of the films Somewhere in May and the four film installations The Face, Thet Win Aung, Win Ma Oo and The Bodhi Tree, all of which compose Portraits.Filmed in India, Europe, the USA and Thailand, the project is conceived to exist as a moving image constellation that tangentially engages with the Burmese resistance and the question of democracy, exile and individual courage. It intends to draw us all into theBurmese resistance no matter where and how far away we are. The films are varied interventions; I wanted to reexamine the question of evidence, the process of collecting evidence, archiving and presentation, its validity and aesthetics with reference to crime and political resistance. I also wanted to intervene in the realm of the image that supposedly belongs to ‘news’ — the image that is valuable, is continuously repeated and forgotten.The Face appears first within the language of ‘TV news’ and then suddenly the film and its events explode to give it another energy — an energy which simultaneously pays homage to Gandhi, critiques the Indian government’s support of the Burmese military as well as becomes evidence of a moral and spiritual crime. The films are also conceived so as to be able to reinvent themselves in the way they are exhibitedas they travel through different exhibition spaces and communities.
MVN: On a more general level one could connect “The Torn First Pages” to several of your other bodies of work, as they deal with ethnic and religious conflicts, violence, resistance, the psychology of power and the emotional effects of repression on personal/individual levels.
AK: I could almost say that maybe all my work can be viewed laterally as well. You couldmove from the center of a film made in 1993 into another in 2005 and still be traveling within the same narrative spiral — sometimes it seems as if the characters are being reborn. It is a journey in multiple directions. Besides I do not exist within the politically drawn boundaries of the Indian nation. It is necessary for me to say in
the region of South Asia as that is a more accurate description of the region that we are all in.
MVN: You have recently been collecting material for new parts of “The Torn First Pages”. Could you talk about the character of these works? As the situation in Burma has deteriorated since the bloody suppression of the protests by the monks in September 2007 it is probably even more difficult to get access to footage.
AK: I am tangentially relating to the Burmese resistance. I have recently filmed extensivelyin the US with several leading Burmese activists and artists belonging to a previousgeneration and now in exile but still politically active while making a living as factoryworkers in the automobile industry. I have also been shooting in India as well as teaching afew Burmese journalists and activists. This is something that I often do. Training people tobe able to film themselves and therefore create newer vocabularies of recording, documenting and even making ‘news’. I have not been filming in Burma as I am not allowed by the military junta, but there has been a lot of clandestine filming which has now become an important source of information and evidence. That’s why it is important to train ‘non professionals’ as well.
MVN: In your talks, writings and visual work you often refer to Gandhi and his teachings —for example in A Season Outside (1998) and in To Remember (2003). It is quite striking toread in some press reports that Gandhi’s strategy of non-violence and civil disobedience is now seeping through in the religious heart of Burma: in the Sangha, the cloister communities in Mandalay, where the monks are inspired by Gandhi in their resistance to the military junta. This must be of special interest to you.
AK: Yes, it is of great interest, though we must note that there are several incredible andinnovative non-violent forms of resistance taking place in the Subcontinent at this time. Many of these are challenging the notion of a ‘shining new and vibrant India’ that the worldseems so happy about. Gandhi has always been relevant and his teachings are in practice even by movements that take up arms at different times.

Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen is curator at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Amar Kanwar was born in 1964 in New Delhi, where he lives and works.

Selected solo shows: 2007: Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi; Whitechapel, London. 2006: The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. 2004: Peter BlumGallery, New York.
Selected group exhibitions: 2007: “There is no border, there is no border, there is no border, no border, no border, no border, I wish”, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruk, Austria; “Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves”, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; “Shooting Back”, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Documenta 12. 2006: “Subcontingent. The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art”, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; 2006 Biennale of Sydney. 2005: “Populism”, Frankfurter Kunstverein/Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam/The Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo/Contemporary Art Center Vilnius (CAC), Vilnius. 2003: “Territories”, KW, Berlin. 2002: Documenta 11.

Published in Flash Art International Edition, ‘Focus India’, No. 258, January – February 2008, pp. 106 – 107.