Satadru
Satadru Sovan Banduri is a well known painter and video artist from India. He started his career like most other artists—by working toward his undergraduate and graduate degrees in fine arts from art school. He was at Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan which is one of the best international art schools in India.He responds to or rather, reacts to his immediate environment and an unfamiliar visual culture through innovations in his art practice. He started working with digital media quite a few years ago while it was still unfashionable to do so in India. After finishing his graduate degree he started working as an independent artist. Since then, he has participated in several regional, national and international art shows.
He also is immensely fascinated by information technology and the digital revolution. He has been learning software that has changed the way he looks at visual art—Photoshop, Flash, Premiere and others. Later, he joined the IT industry as a professional where he gained proficiency in working with imaging and video software to create 'commercial art' like animation movies and websites.
Presents
"The Autoerotic Man"
Porter's Bridge Gallery, University of California
1156 High Street,Santa Cruz, CA 95064
On Display April 4th to 15th, 2007
Reception Friday April 6th 6-9pm
The Autoerotic Man is an art exhibition which considers different modes of self-pleasure through various media. The work on showcase explores male indulgence from many perspectives. This show functions as a forum for open dialogue about gender stereotypes hoping to expand conceptions about the male experience. By bringing this topic into the public sphere, The Autoerotic Man hopes to provoke innovative ways of thinking about social paradigms.
Artists include:
Satadru Sovan Banduri,
David Castro,
Levi Goldman,
Adam Harms,
Sean Michael Rau,
Olivia Vegh,
Adam Weis,
and Yano Rivera.
Review
http://www.cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=524
http://www.cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=526
The Museum of Art & History
Santa Cruz California
Presents Invisible Boardwalks Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk: New Media Projects Part I UCSC Art Students April 14th - May 18th, 2007
"Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert… In the coastline's haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel's withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit…and already sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea…"
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
In Italo Calvino's, 1972 novel Invisible Cities, Marco Polo, spins fantastical descriptions of the many cities that make up Genghis Kahn's vast empire. Each city described by Polo has its own unique and individual character. Each city has its own face, its own fingerprint. Ultimately, every city described is the same city—one city, with many perspectives and gateways. Like the city described in Invisible Cities, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk has many different faces to many different people. The Boardwalk becomes something different, something unique, and something personal, to every individual person. These student artworks reflect their individual and intimate perspective on the Boardwalk. They create a mapping of the space through culture, emotion, activity and imaginings.
Elliot Anderson, faculty curator
Satadru Sovan Banduri , Mollye Chudacoff , Toan Do , Leonel Diaz , Jordan Jurich , Jena Ong, Ian Alan Paul, Nolan Plant, Robert Plant & Lydia Schufreider.
Cross Cultural Celebration :: Digital Video Installation and Net-based Art
Reception Wednesday May 16th 5:30- 9pm
Faculty Gallery, Porter College, UCSC
Locating the cross cultural dialogue between two countries, Satadru Sovan Banduri became interested in the richness of strong cultural and social distinctions, where personal and social spaces combine. The coexistence seemed beautiful. Through geography and through cultural experience he asked, "What are the differences between India and the United States?" Each country has its own culture; when a person crosses cultures, they compare their own experience with the new experience, past experience with present. Presented here are some memories of India and some memories of the U.S. put together as a form of celebration. This is a portrayal of love, dance, great festivals, and marriage. Cross Cultural Celebration uses video-installation as well as net-based art, and seeks to pollinate the cultural traditions of India with new media technology.
PRESS RELEASE
Cross Cultural Celebration
Satadru Sovan Banduri is a Fulbright Research Scholar interested in bringing digital art and new media back to his home country, India. He is immensely fascinated by information technology and the digital revolution. Presently he is working with digital video, and experimenting with its expressive potential. He is affiliated with the Digital Arts/New Media MFA Program at UCSC.
In locating the cross cultural dialogue between two countries, Banduri says “I wanted to explore the richness of strong cultural and social distinctions, where personal and social spaces combine. Their coexistence seemed beautiful. In a journey through geographical space and through cultural experience, I've asked, what are the differences between India and the United States? Each country has its own unique culture. Someone who crosses between cultures has the opportunity to compare old experiences with the new, past experience with present. Here are some memories of India and some memories of the U.S. put together as a form of celebration. This is a portrayal of love, dance, great festivals, and marriage. Cross Cultural Celebration uses video-installation as well as net-based art, and seeks to pollinate the cultural traditions of India with new media technology.”
Celebration of Love
In the center of the room are four video-installations, each one of which speaks about a different aspect of love. The four videos are split into topics: gay, lesbian, trans-gender, and heterosexual love. Each video seeks to show the emotion and passion of life by exploring themes of love through the body and the gesture. Sensuality, desire, pleasure, celebration, love, and romantic moments are all part of both the sacred and the profane in the US cultural framework.
The Journey
Although not totally related to the idea of celebration, by showing the differences between the driving experience in the U.S., and the roads in India, this piece seeks to show different perspectives. Both people are habituated to their cultural atmosphere. India is so crowded, so overpopulated, it is noisy, with too many people, and no social controls. Comparatively, the smooth, boring, and lonely journey driving a car through California is common in American life.
Street Step
The film seeks to draw the attention to the cultural differences between dancing in India and dancing in California. Three videos are mixed together: the Garba dance, salsa on the boardwalk, and a street dance in Santa Cruz. The Garba dance is a circular dance performed by the women of Gujaat on the occasion of Navratri i.e. the October-harvest time. Though the city dwellers have introduced elaborate modern styles and gestures in the Garba dance, its core form has remained more or less intact. Costumes are never prescribed by any set of rules but a happy tendency has grown among city people to take to folk costumes, colours and ornaments. Singing in chorus invariably accompanies the Garba dance. The dance mood is very slow, partly because there is ritual fasting devoted to the Durga goddess. These particular celebrations are located in north India. Salsa is a Hispanic dance, very speedy, and the stepping is very different. During a Santa Cruz street dance, the people spontaneously interacted with the music. Banduri says, “that spontaneity attracts me. Both types of dancing are something new to me, that I have never experienced before.”
Desperately Seeking
The whole installation is based on social documentation of both societies through net-based research. It uses the material from dating websites which many people use to find a partner. The installation speaks to the question, "How does culture influence what makes a partner desirable?" Personal advertisements in India write about family backgrounds, and include an entire family description including the seeker’s job, salary and caste--whether Hindu, Brahmin or Baniya. These are considered important traits in finding a good match. When American people are looking for partners, they look for a personal description of the prospect’s figure, or more sexual questions, specifically about orientation. In the U.S. it is either the man-looking for a woman, a man seeking a man, a woman seeking another woman, and a woman seeking a man.
Matrimonial Bazaar
When a new product is being launched in the market, there is a lot of campaigning for the product. After the campaigning, companies settle on their price. When releasing the final product, they give away free merchandise with the final sale. I compare the same process of marketing, to the matrimonial process in my country. First the father puts an ad in the newspaper for his groom or bride to be. When a partner is found, the groom's family meets the bride's and the bargaining starts. How much dowry (money, gold, jewelry, cars, house, furniture) are they going to ask for the marriage? After setting the price the bride's father has to please the groom's family, and he does this by giving them some extra gifts. This video is a personal vision on the commodification of marriage.
Great Festival of India
Durga Pooja is celebrated with joy all over India, especially West Bengal, in worship of the goddess Durga. It is like Christmas. Singing, dancing, sweets, and gaiety are an integral part of the Durga Pooja Festival. People send Durga Pooja gifts to dear ones and express good wishes. Companies give out bonuses, people buy new dresses and jewelry, repair their houses, and everything is new at that time. During the festival structures are built on the streets or parks using bamboo and clothes, and in the evenings people go out in nice clothes to visit these temple structures. The festival becomes a competition between city blocks competing for the prestige of having the most elaborately decorated temple. Rich or poor, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and other religions all participate in this festival. That is part of what makes it great.
Digital arts New media MFA Exhibition
Cross Cultural sensuality
Cross Cultural emerges from Satadru Banduri’s continuing work with developing dialogs around gender and sensuality, creating visual statements of India’s and the United States’ cultural differences in ethnic and gender issues. He expresses these through an installation with video exploring sensuality, desire, pleasure, celebration, love, and romantic moments – all part of the sacred and the profane in both cultural frameworks.