Conversation led by Jahnavi Phalkey, Damian Christinger and Ravi Agarwal
Date: 16 December 2023
Time: 3 PM – 5 PM
Venue: Old PWD Complex

Kochi-Muziris Biennale presents ‘The Soil Assembly: Ecologies, Circularities and Living Pedagogies” in partnership with Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore India.

SWISS INSTITUTE CONTEMPORARY ART NEW YORK
Centering on the fluctuating sands that form landing beaches in the Bay of Bengal, Agarwal’s presentation considers the ever-evolving relations between sea and shore, and how these changes influence the lives of those who inhabit this unstable boundary.

Landfills are ‘non-places,’ archives and hiding places of global production and consumption, yet in constant motion. They transform local ecologies to non-natures as “accumulation(s) without metabolism.” Everything here is in various states of transition, leaching out chemicals and toxic metals, intermingling dispossessed humans, bacteria and viruses, a seeming resting place from where new seepages begin into other strata and mediums. They have a stench of decay and rot, where waste pickers, rummage for dregs and leftovers. Often sited where the out-of-sight poor reside, they constitute a situated experienced ‘nature,’ unglorified and unromantic. Without them, the global economy could collapse, since here capitalisms outcastes – ‘negative goods’ ‘polluted’ bodies, and other beings – interact intimately and are normalized.

This panel discussion was a way for us to explore in greater detail some themes from our 2022 exhibition, ‘Echoes of the Land’. Held in Nov 2022 at Ojas Art in Delhi, the session ‘Invisible Web – Connecting India’s art, food and natural histories’ brought together the perspectives of historian Rana Safvi, environmental activist Bittu Sahgal and art collector Paul Abraham. The panel was moderated by artist and environmental campaigner Ravi Agarwal.

As the next iteration of State of Nature—a project initiated by Goethe-Institut and Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai in 2018 that brings together multiple perspectives to understand and address our present ecological crisis—the exhibition New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born is a proposition to rethink the world as we know it today. Taking place in Spring 2022, the exhibition was curated by Ravi Agarwal and curator of literature Ranjit Hoskote, who conceptualised a complimentary programme consisting of prominent writers, poets, and essayists.

Round table with Sunil Kant Munjal, founder of Serendipity Arts, Ravi Agarwal, curator of Imagined Documents exhibition and member of the Serendipity Arles Grant jury, Devika Singh, member of the Serendipity Arles Grant jury and artist Sathish Kumar, Serendipity Arles Grant winner.

Join us for a moderated conversation between Dilip Da Cunha, Ravi Agarwal and Vibha Galhotra as they explore how art, architecture and design represent, respond to or engage with environmental concerns within the specific social and ecological context(s) of India. Taking off from the panelists’ common commitment to the politics of water, the panel aims to open up broader questions of enquiry around the complex relationship between human beings, the natural world, and the future of the planet. The webinar is moderated by Ruth Pollard, columnist and journalist with Bloomberg Opinion.

In this episode of In Person, Ravi Agarwal walks us through the various aspects of ecology that the exhibition explores. He talks about how the artists and the works in the show create new dialogues that enable an understanding of humans and their relationships with nature, while also disseminating knowledge and new research rooted in an ethics of practice.

Sustainability Now was conceptualized as a platform to unpack pressing environmental issues of today to ensure a greener and brighter tomorrow.

Avid Learning presents the latest edition in this series, Sustainability NOW: Arts for Wildlife Conservation- A panel discussion which looked at the significant role the visual and performing arts play in responding to environmental issues and crises. The arts have the power to move people, to raise awareness, shape opinions and draw attention to urgent issues of our planet. So, what is the connection and relationship between conservation and the arts?

Tune in for an engrossing session that takes a closer look at the importance of the arts and to learn about the exemplary work our changemakers are doing – in the fight for conservation!

Sunaparanta – Goa Centre for the Arts presents Episode III of ListenIN titled Nature, Art & Our Collective Future, a conversation with contemporary artists Sheba Chhachhi & Ravi Agarwal.

Ravi Agarwal speaks to Art Divvy’s creative director Zahra Khan about how he began exploring his brand of ecological art activism, the reception his work receives, and what he is focussing upon currently amongst many other things!

To coincide with World Water Day 2021 on March 22, The Third Pole gathered a panel of regional experts to discuss the problem of plastic pollution in Asia’s rivers

This collection seeks to not only outline the specific conditions and responses to climate change in India, but also takes an unusual ground-up approach of including voices of those who are researching landscapes and observing changes in them, across disciplines and practices

Christoph Rosol (moderator), Ravi Agarwal, Huiying Ng, Paulina Lopez, Michelle Lai

A conversation on finding newer ways of organizing life in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the larger climate crisis. Can the arts inspire a movement to radically change the way we impact the planet? What kind of changes in art’s vocabulary, materials and media are needed when artists further their explorations? What can be the feminist interventions in ecology?

Meera Menezes talking to Ravi Agarwal and Probir Gupta as they reflect on issues of labour, migration, capital and globalization in relation to their practice.

As part of Collab’s ongoing discourse pertaining the ecological dichotomy, curator Jesal Thacker invites Ravi Agarwal for an online presentation and conversation focusing on one of his extended and continuous project, ‘Else all will be Still’. The artist will take us through his artistic and ecological enquiry that began several years ago, as a nexus of encounters between the sea, the fisherman and the relationship between man and nature – can they co-exist?

The State of Nature in India lecture series aims to provide a multi-disciplinary platform in order to better understand complexities of anthropogenic processes – a term that depoliticises the current ecological crisis – and critique what it means through a focus on India.

Convened by artist and activist Ravi Agarwal, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai.

This exhibtion by Indian artist Ravi Agarwal explores the issues behind environmental enrichment and degredation and the similarities and differences between approaches to preservation and enhancement in both Scotland and India.

About State of Nature in India: This conference aimed to better understand complexities of anthropogenic processes – a term that depoliticises the current ecological crisis – and critique what it means through a focus on India. It sought to dissolve boundaries between multiple practices by bringing together artists, cultural practitioners, natural and social scientists, policymakers, activists and thinkers, initiating cross disciplinary conversations.

Most of the trash we generate can be used to produce fertilizer and generate electricity. Instead, huge mounds of it lie piled up in our cities and villages, posing a serious threat to public health and the
environment.We bring you some solutions; simple ways to treat waste, so that we may reuse, recycle and revive the earth. In Satyamev Jayate Season 2 Episode 3 we deal with the waste management in India.

Regarding India is series of video interviews with contemporary artists living and working in India. Initiated through a Fulbright Fellowship in 2011, the videos were created to contribute to Myers’s University of Connecticut course on Indian art. Reflective of a dynamic and diverse contemporary art scene during a decade of unprecedented and often volatile change, the interviews engage with aspects of Indian history, society, culture and current events through the creative work, experiences, and insights of artists. The series is ongoing and will eventually include over sixty interviews.

We seem to know nature as something outside us, as a deep experience. The separation makes us know nature as an ‘other’, a duality. But we all also know nature through our myths and memories. Post enlightenment nature has been understood as a set of scientific laws and theories, as an absolute. But as Bruno Latour says, we as social beings co-create ideas of nature. Sadly though today we increasingly know nature as a ‘resource’ to be exploited and plundered. The film is a reflection of all these, as a personal myth about water turning to sewage in a forest I helped protect.

After air, the next most vital thing for our survival is water. While at the moment we have enough water for our needs, a time is likely to come when our water supply runs out and we have to buy water at a price similar to fuel. The solution, which some people have implemented, is to save and store rainwater.

YAMUNA.ELBE – Session I – Introduction – Ravi Agarwal (Artist and Environmentalist)

Ravi Agarwal, Riyas Komu, Vivek Vilasini, Sumedh Rajendran and Sudarshan Shetty interviewed in the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art 31th March – 2nd April 2009. All artists included in the exhibition Indian Highway (2nd April – 23rd August 2009) in the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. See more interviews: ‘Indian Highway interviews – part 1/2’. Interviews: Hanne Beate Ueland, camera: Lars Skageberg, Øyvind Krutå (Sudarshan Shetty), editing: Hanne Beate Ueland, Lars Skageberg. Indian Highway curated by: Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Peyton-Jones.