From the Missing Pages 2020, Mixed Media on Paper,
Courtesy: The Artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Commissioned by Gwangju Biennale 2021
Mumbai-based artist, Sahej Rahal’s work is a bit of an enigma. Rooted in the mythological, imaginary and futuristic, Rahal is known to create sculptural hybrids, possibly interpreted as species that don’t belong to our land. His works have been exhibited across India, the Liverpool Biennial, UK; Kunst (Zeug) Haus, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland; Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany, to name a few. The 13th Gwangju Biennale, one of the world’s most respected contemporary arts biennale held earlier in the year, had two of Rahal’s works on view. Missing Pages, a growing collection of paintings, and Bashinda which is an AI (artificial intelligence) simulated work that features amorphous, multi-limbed creatures wandering through expansive landscapes. Helmed by artistic directors, Natasha Ginwala and Defne Ayas, the theme for the South Korean biennale was, ‘Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning’. Platform spoke to Rahal about his participatory works.
How did you interpret the Gwangju Biennale’s theme titled, ‘Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning’?
To me, the curatorial vision set forth by Natasha and Defne was a deep dive into the recesses of what we understand by the term ‘intelligence’. What are its origins? And how do we make sense of this term when our world is increasingly populated by non-human forms of intelligence? They were essentially charting out a cartography of the mind across time, from the ancient past to indigenous forms of knowing, to artificial superintelligence, to forces that lie beyond the human experience – from microbial life, to speculative organisms that would inhabit the future and those that reside in the mythical past that have vanished from our present, in the way it is structured by language and history, especially in terms of our engagement with the world as a resource – one that is to be conquered and claimed. Natasha and Defne brought together articulations that challenge this worldview.
Could you talk about your works that were exhibited?
I made two separate projects which were commissioned for the biennale. The first was a series of paintings called Missing Pages, which is a continuation of the paintings that I have been doing for a while. They are on paper and made with pigments that are used in miniature paintings; I’ve used Kandahar ink.
The images that I make are drawn from sources like anime and video games, but also from manuscripts such as, Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt (The Wonders of Creation) and CodexSeraphinianus (an illustrated monograph of an imagined world). The idea here was to create a manuscript that is not yet complete. The story goes that I am not the one makingthese images myself, rather I am just finding these pages. Moreover, the actual shape of this book is not known and the rumour is that it might even be changing as the number of pages increase, because some of the pages are slightly larger than A4 size pages, while others are almost seven feet in length. This also comes from the fact that I am drawing onwhatever paper I find.
Also, no one has seen the complete form yet. This idea is drawn from something that (Jorge Luis) Borges wrote about. For instance, he has written The Library of Babel, which has an immense number of books and [the library] keeps growing in itself. In Borges’ The Book of Sand, the whole idea is that it is never-ending and each time you turn a page, the book expands further. So, I am trying to draw on that gesture of rendering something that is infinite and unfinished. Or, consider Zakariya al-Qazwini’s Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt (The Wonders of Creation), where he wanted to put down everything that exists – not just in the known world, but in the imagined world as well. So, it’s got everything from astrological charts and maps, to weird creatures and renditions of hell and so on. I am inspired by such people and this is essentially what this project is.
Still from Bashinda (AI program) 2020, AI simulation
Courtesy: The Artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Commissioned by Gwangju Biennale 2021.
Your second work, Bashinda (2020), which features a twelve-limbed being, was also commissioned for the biennale.
Yes. Bashinda is an AI-simulated world where you encounter multiple creatures. Each creature has multiple AI scripts that are driving them. For instance, the main twelve-ten- tacled creature that you see – each of those tentacles is run by a separate AI behavioural script, which directs movement. So, when you attach these separate scripts to the body of one organism, you have utter chaos because it’s like the creature is being driven by multiple minds.
This is one creature and then there are multiple creatures – bipeds, quadrupeds and other multi-limbed things – in the world as well. When these beings encounter each other, sometimes they are hostile and therefore push each other. Sometimes, they just get entangled and dance together. Such interactions produce the mood of this entire virtual world.
When you create creatures that are rolling and meandering across a bleak landscape, what are you trying to communicate?
I never set out thinking about what I will be creating. I just play around, trying to see what works and what doesn’t work together and somehow things happen. So, that’s my process. It’s almost like these things, kind of, take their own shape, but once they are done, then I start thinking about what they could mean.
Bashinda means inhabitant or citizen in Hindi and Urdu. Right now, we have this system of exclusion that the State is perpetuating that is premised essentially on the caste system. The caste system is a purely mythological system because there is no physical grounding for it. It is believed that there is the body of this cosmic man, Manu, at the centre of the universe and his head gave birth to the higher caste and his feet to the lower castes. This separation between the mind and limb – separates the highest from the lowest in our society.
Now, what if we were able to propose an alternative to the cosmic hierarchy? Each of the limbs of the creatures in the AI-simulation have separate virtual minds attached to them (in that, there are AI scripts). Each of these scripts drives the motion of the creatures chaotically and as they interact with each other, and they end up creating a whole different cosmology, upon which we can reimagine ways of co-habiting a world, without hierarchies. The world of Bashinda essentially creates a counter mythology populated by non-human organisms.
At another level, each of these AI scripts are capable of ‘listening’. So, all these programmes are run on computers and through their in-built microphones, they register audio input. So, the sound that lies outside the virtual world, interrupts the movements of the creatures and the environment as well. For example, if there is a loud sound, the redcreatures in the simulated world will emit bursts of indigo flowers. Or, if you start to sing, then the programme would begin unfolding in a certain way in response to your voice. In fact, you could even create a jugalbandi with it.
How did you present the AI simulation?
In the space, there was be a big screen which was hooked up to a computer via an HDMI cable and there were microphones in the space. And on old television sets, the other crea- tures were shown to be running on separate programs. So, there were multiple iterations of the program playing out. The larger screen was following a large, crimson-tentacled creature.
Your work is rooted in the mythological and the absurd. What draws you to imagine such worlds?
When you encounter a myth, rather than a [factual] story, what makes it interesting is that it makes a claim that the world you live in once had gods and demons or perhaps still does. It’s fascinating for me – this weird, murky, almost like an enigma. Not that I buy into it. But myth-making is appealing. Like, if someone tells you that the world is actually sitting on the back of a turtle, you are like, “What?” That kind of escapist invitation that mythology offers is interesting for me to unpack.
Finally, what have you been working on?
I have made another fictional sketchbook. There is also another project that I am working on where I am making these burial homes, where bodies were once buried in massive terracotta pots. Final Forest is another AI program that I built as part of a residency. I also got a fellowship from the Junge Akademie in Berlin. There I will be creating AI programs that will respond to sculptures in real life. So, the sculptures become ways in which you can interact with the program.
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Text Radhika Iyengar
Date 14-12-2021