Re:Sonating: Hekh hosted its first in-house gathering “Re:Sonating #1” on 14th and 15th September, 2024 at the studio in Mayur Vihar; The gathering went on for two days, reflecting, discussing and extending Call #1, hekh’s first publication that was published in August 2024. Call #1 brings together a unique mapping by 16 artists and cultural practitioners, thinking together on how institutions and structures linger within artistic practices, navigating complex socio-cultural formulations and extending new imaginaries of practices emerging within the Delhi art milieu.
10 of our amazing contributors in the publication (Anurag Singraur, Aditi Purwar, Arun Kumar Singh, Manika, Priyesh Gothwal, Pavni Anand, Rahul Juneja, Rohan Dahiya, Soumya Yadav, Studio A68, and Tushti Pundir) activated, morphed, extended their contributions and went beyond; engaging in intense participative modes of discussion with the participant gatherers.
Through this gathering, a space of ‘stretch’ was created through the intimacy afforded by the environment of the ‘home studio’, surrounded by food, comfortable beddings, and company, and through tweaking of protocols of presenting and responding- to bring in voices generally unheard, for instance, students, young artists who generally remain ‘unheard’ due to perceived (or tangible) hierarchies of age, vocabularies, discursive language, or institutional repercussions. This made it possible to bring the vulnerabilities, anxieties and lived experience of the figure of the student-artist, which remains a stark void within the paradigm of artistic pedagogy.
In the gathering, each activation/presentation/performance/extension lasted for 20 minutes, with at least an hour or more of discussion time reserved (which was also extended). Such conscious listening gave equal agency to the audience-participator within the gathering. The gatherings went on from day till late evenings; with more than 45 people floating in and out of space (offline) and around 35 people offline.
The gathering traced and meandered through cracks born out of expansions and contractions; detected and summoned phantoms, slingshotted new epistemic orders, hummed songs of integrities and friendships, summoned new relational orders of self beyond its mimetic functions; teleported the studio through cosmic and cellular registers, painted Sisyphean masterpieces, and illustrated existential artistic dreads through serotonin addicted donkeys. Downed with samosas and beverages of choice, the discussion rendered palpable a world that the contemporary artists find themselves thrown within and courses daily.