Contemporary Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist and independent curator Ranjit Hoskote will give a talk at Asia Art Archive.

For the first time in the 117-year history of the Venice Biennale, India has been represented this year by a professionally curated national pavilion. Organised by poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote, and titled 'Everyone Agrees: It's About To Explode', the pavilion brings together works by Zarina Hashmi, Praneet Soi, Gigi Scaria, and the Desire Machine Collective. Hoskote announced his explicit intention to 'break with the established tenor of the conversation about contemporary Indian art’ in his concept and selection, and to 'draw attention to the multiple locations from which value is created' in the complex and entangled Indian art situation. Confronting the contested notion of representing the nation-state, Hoskote shifted the emphasis of the pavilion from nationality to cultural citizenship, from official culture to transcultural practice. In this lecture, Hoskote will address the contexts and outcomes of his India pavilion experiment, which he describes as being in equal parts 'laboratory, stage and school.'

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist, and curator. Over 2000-2002, Hoskote co-curated the trans-Asian curatorial project, ‘Under Construction’ (Japan Foundation). Hoskote and Hyunjin Kim co-curated, with Artistic Director Okwui Enwezor, the 7th Gwangju Biennial (Korea, 2008). Hoskote is curator for India’s first-ever national pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies; most recently, 'Biennials of Resistance', in Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebo eds., The Biennial Reader (Hatje Cantz, 2010) and, co-authored with Nancy Adajania, 'The Nth Field: The Horizon Reloaded', in Maria Hlavajova, Simon Sheikh and Jill Winder eds., On Horizons: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art (BAK, 2011). He has authored nine artist monographs; most recently, Zinny & Maidagan: Compartment/ Das Abteil (Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/ Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010). With Nancy Adajania, Hoskote is co-author of The Dialogues Series (Popular/ Foundation B&G, 2011), an unfolding programme of conversations with artists. Hoskote has been writer-in-residence at Theater der Welt, Essen/ Mülheim (2010), 'The Promised City'/ Polnisches Institut, Berlin (2010), and is research scholar at BAK/ Basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2010-2011). He is the author of 20 books, including Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Die Ankunft der Vögel (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006), and I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Děd (Penguin Classics, 2011). He is an Asia Art Archive Academic Advisor.

 DVD documentation of this talk is now available for viewing at the Archive.