Shiv Nadar University | School of Humanities and Social Sciences

…how will I ever know if I have reached the horizon? There will always be a horizon waiting. 11.10.‘15 The pages that follow envelop around the developments in my work within the past two years spent at Shiv Nadar University. My work... more

This book was made as part of a site-specific project during my post-graduation from Shiv Nadar University. The site was the university’s library where the book was incorporated, and presently rests on its shelf. There are seven sentences... more

This book was made as part of a site-specific project during my post-graduation from Shiv Nadar University. The site was the university’s library where the book was incorporated, and presently rests on its shelf. There are seven sentences extracted from my diary to ground the book upon. Each sentence is a chapter woven together with images of objects collected through time, drawings and sculptures, photographs of my body, of eye veins, of wall seepages, of seeing and gathering.
Words have a form just like images, a constructed space beyond their meaning. We tend to read words and absorb their meaning, ignoring them as visuals, and the subtle sense they give when placed next to other words/images. Here, by randomly juxtaposing words with images, I attempt to loosen their boundaries and transgress. The emphasis here is on what the words and images do and how they behave at the centre of the page, what is their relation to the other words/ images, and their relation to the mind perceiving them. A single word/image is placed at the center of each recto (right- hand side page), defining a single frame for the eyes to adjust to and to play with the memory. Just like words, the images also form a sentence. With the turning of each page the meaning of both these sentences surfaces and merges into each other, forming a transitory relationship. They echo in the prominently white blankness of the page; they resonate in the gaps between flipping the pages. Each word/image becomes isolated at the particular moment of confronting it which accentuates its tangibility, and yet it is related to the other words/images. These interrelations of form, the sense they generate and the negative space does not conclude at a definite point but dis- perses through the book.
There are two more editions of the same book, exploring the relation between word-image further. One has less words and more images, and the other has less images and more words. It is done to see how few images can affect the meaning of many words and vice versa. Here I’ve used more blank pages which are as important as the word/image, and just not remain as divisions between chapters.

Bookmark
Download
- by sonam chaturvedi
- •
- Word and Image Studies

Here, I’ve used kajal and it’s property of erasure to form words and erase their meanings through human interaction. These words are written on floor, and as people walk on them they get smudged and transferred on the path the person... more

Bookmark
Download
- by sonam chaturvedi
- •
- 3
  Interactive Arts, Site-Specific Art, Erasure In Art

This practice-based essay explores the nuances of intimacy through the coming together of bodies – their gestures, languages and sensorial occupation within a (physical) space of sharing, socializing and reflecting in a pandemic and... more

This practice-based essay explores the nuances of intimacy through the coming together of bodies – their gestures, languages and sensorial occupation within a (physical) space of sharing, socializing and reflecting in a pandemic and post-pandemic world. The initiative stems from first draft – a collaborative project that began in 2018 as an alternative art space initiated by a group of artist-friends. The process behind ‘drafts’ becomes essential in creating a playful space to invite a flux of dialogues, mistakes, accidents, revisions, incidents and receptivity among others, challenging the conventions of producing and displaying ‘artworks’/exhibition-making. The initiative has now evolved into a space of gatherings, called first draft·ings, where we meet in small groups at a residential/non-commercial space in New Delhi, India. These gatherings have provided a niche for people from varied fields to connect through conversations, involving performers, researchers, sound/visual-designers, engineers/makers, educators and others. It offers a space to come together, share, eat, drink, chat, play, rest, recuperate and perhaps create (/not) around a pre-decided collective prompt. How can we reimagine/question/provoke new forms of art making and its dissemination through these acts of coming together?

The essay takes a closer look at these ongoing ‘slow’ gatherings whereby we do not necessarily create, yet reflect over the conversations that sprout into more connections, extensions, and leave/take forward its residues. In the essay, we follow a non-linear approach by revisiting the sessions through narrative writing, and oscillating between the expository two-folds of the binaries. We explore the methodologies of first draft·ings and touch upon the questions of intimacy through transmission as a performative strategy. We attempt to explore the methods and vocabularies of a gathering by responding to the specific prompts through actions of – storytelling, compassionate listening, walking, watching films, playing games, gifting, laughing and more. We propose to traverse the peripheral nature of gatherings through proximity, collaboration, improvisation, slowness, rest, thus partaking in the intimate act(s) of transmission.

Bookmark
Download
- by Sumedha Bhattacharyya and +1
  sonam chaturvedi
- •
- 9
  Sociology, Cultural Studies, Improvisation, Performance Studies

Reframes the regional history of South Asia away from the subcontinental Indian mainland Located at the intersection of colonial, environmental, and legal history Integrates climate history with socio-political history Brings... more

Reframes the regional history of South Asia away from the subcontinental Indian mainland
Located at the intersection of colonial, environmental, and legal history
Integrates climate history with socio-political history
Brings present-day north-east India into a wider historical and regional analysis
Addresses the gap in research on formative years of the British rule
Studies lesser-known areas like Cachar, Manipur, Tripura, and Jaintia

This study is a richly detailed historical work of the unsettled half-century from the 1790s to the 1830s when the British East India Company strove to establish control of the colonial north-eastern frontiers spanning the River Brahmaputra to the Burmese border. It offers a much-needed reframing of regional histories of South Asia away from the subcontinental Indian mainland to the varied social ecologies of Sylhet, Cachar, Manipur, Jaintia, and Khasi hills.

As a mercantile corporation, the EIC aimed at getting in command of the millennium-old over-land commercial routes connecting India and China. The study specifically engages with the early nineteenth century explorations of trade across Burma. Simultaneously, the Mughal diwani grant compelled the EIC to govern territory. Drawing on extensive research, the study demonstrates the incompatibility of bureaucratic power, the complex socio-economic networks of authority, and the ever-changing landscapes of the region. In a monsoon climate, where rivers moved and land was inundated for months, any attempt to form a uniform administration tended to clash with hybrid landscapes and waterscapes. This work explores how daily administrative and military practice shaped colonial polities and subject formation.

Located at the intersection of colonial, legal, and environmental history, the study is of particular interest for scholars and students in history, political ecology, and anthropology.
Readership: This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and students of colonial Indian history, environmental history, and legal history, particularly of northeast India and Bengal.

Landscapes and the Law is situated at the crossroads of environmental, colonial, and legal history. It examines the role of law in consolidating early colonial rule from the perspective of people’s access to nature in forests and hill... more

The works presented in this collection take environmental scholarship in South Asia into novel territory by exploring how questions of national identity become entangled with environmental concerns in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and... more

Bookmark
Download
- by Gunnel Cederlöf
- •
- 6
  Anthropology, Environmental History, Identity (Culture), Ecology

Sustainability at Dead-Ends: The Future of Hope in Rural Japan Bridget Love 61 65 71 79 87 95 Asian Environments Asian Environments

A premise in the study of British rule on Indian territory is its roots in the aggressive politics of an early-modern European mercantile corporation. However, the consequences of this premise for our understanding of the early formation... more

Sustainability at Dead-Ends: The Future of Hope in Rural Japan Bridget Love 61 65 71 79 87 95 Asian Environments Asian Environments

A symposium on human-environment relations in the long term
Seminar Vol. 673, 2015

Bookmark
Download
- by Gunnel Cederlöf
- •
- 6
  History, Landscape Ecology, Human Geography, Environmental History

This volume investigates how, where and when subjects and citizens come into being, assert themselves and exercise subjecthood or citizenship in the formation of modern India. It argues for the importance of understanding legal practice –... more

Bookmark
Download
- by Gunnel Cederlöf and +1
  Sanjukta Das Gupta
- •
- 4
  Environmental History, Legal Anthropology, Legal History, Modern Indian History

This volume investigates how, where and when subjects and citizens come into being, assert themselves and exercise subjecthood or citizenship in the formation of modern India. It argues for the importance of understanding legal practice –... more

Research on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company, respectively. The historical... more

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Log In