Ajaykumar MA, PATHE, ILTM, FRSA, FRAS
Ajaykumar teaches on the MA in Performance Making. On the undergraduate curriculum he currently teaches or has recently taught the following courses: Technology, Art, and Being; Narrative Construction in Film; Notions of void, emptiness, and 'an art of spectatorship' in Japanese Art and Culture; Multi-Media and Site-Specific Art. In addition he is part of the teaching team of Culture and Performance, core third year course.
His studies in fine art, film, and performance have formally been at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London; the Institute of Education, University of London; and at the Royal College of Art. He is also a member of the University of Arts London Research Centre, Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN).
Ajaykumar's academic research traverses practice and theory. His
research as an artist has been award-winning and critically acclaimed;
and has had international manifestation. Initially working as a
writer, director, performer, and producer in experimental performance,
particularly site-specific, and multi-media projects, his creative
and research concerns now span a number of disciplines: architecture,
design, digital art, film, fine art, live/performance art, net art,
site-specific art.
He is currently a co-director of the shapes design studio where
he is collaborating with an architect and product designer to engender
furniture, lighting and gardens that come into 'being' through the
play of others. Current projects include
- luminescence – a garden of the night and day, a garden for the Peabody Trust, London
- tate modern – a tantric viewing, a film being screened in international festivals and galleries and podcast
- iPak - 10,000 songs, 10,000 images, 10,000 abuses, a series of films for podcast; together with a net art work. iPak’s development has been supported by an Arts Admin Digital Bursary, and the Arts Council of England. It is to be launched by Turbulence.
Detailed information available on his past and present practice in art, furniture, lighting, and garden design is available at:
www.shapes-design.com
www.ajaykumar.com
turbulence.org/spotlight/ajaykumar/index.htm
Research interests
Ajaykumar’s 'meta' research concerns particular relationships between art, science, technology and philosophy. It interrogates the contemporary pertinence and evolution of a hypothesis of 'non-anthropocentric being' and 'the being of a space'. It examines ideas in contemporary science that engender reconsiderations of such notions.Approaches to such notions emerged in Sanskritic Art as defined by the Natya Shastra, commentaries on it by Abhinavagupta, and in Tantric Art. Tantric art reached maturation in South Asia around fifth century C.E., manifesting in an integrated practice of dependent origination of architecture-art-body-health-nature-philosophy-technology, epitomised by rock cut edifices at Ellora. The architecture of these edifices, including the surrounding voided space, comes into being only through cognisant beings' performative kinaesthetics. Particular new scientific research further interrogates such notions of a 'relational being'.
This emphasis on 'an art of spectatorship' concern him in the aforementioned diverse disciplines with which he engages: architecture, design, digital art, film, fine art, live/performance art, net art, site-specific art, video art.