Pages of Madness by Ajaykumar

Form: Internet art/digital art
Date: 2004 to present

Public Presentation

• Turbulence Gallery, USA

2004 to present

• Testimony - Inside Stories of Mental Health Care – touring group exhibition: Bourne Hall
• Museum, Epsom, Penrith Museum, Penrith, The Custard Factory, Birmingham, Aug-Sept. ’07;
• ISEA2006/ Zero One San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, as part of M-I I-M presentation USA, Aug. 2006;
• Carnival of E-Creativity, New Delhi, India, Jan. 2006;
• Community TV Channel, UK, Mad for Arts Online Gallery, 2004-06;
• Rampton High Security Hospital, Retford, UK, Mar. 2005;
• Generative Arts Festival, Milan, Italy, Dec. 2004;
• National Film Theatre, London, 6th Disability Film Festival, Dec. 2004.

Project Description
pages of madness takes one hundred million years to view in entirety, or fifteen seconds in snapshot: random image generation triggers almost limitless permutation of images with a solitary text sequence and soundtrack. The text sequence emphasises a polyphonic ‘i’. pages of madness employs montage to engender a series of ‘meanings’ that come into being through interplays of text, sound, photographic, and video image, and the spectator herself.

pages of madness involves trans-media re-conceptions of concrete poetry and the ciné-roman, examines the visuality of text in a web dominated by text; and consists of investigations in narrative space and construction; and explorations of notions of cyberspace in relation to Asian ideas of void. Still images are randomly generated in relation to an ordered linearity of text and constancy of sound, with near endless permutation, so that the work can be experienced in a snapshot of fifteen seconds through to over a hundred million years.

pages of madness is an engagement with medical research that suggests racism engenders mental illness. Black people in Britain are several times more likely to suffer from mental illness such as schizophrenia than white people: the causes of which are social rather than biological. Professor Robin Murray, of The Institute of Psychiatry, believes “The experience of black people in the UK almost drives them mad”. [3] pages of madness is an ongoing project of particular community and political engagement in relation to digital technology, involving those who inhabit the margins of society including the digital society.

Artist Information
Ajaykumar’s art work is not the art object but the creation of a sublime world that manifests in an ephemeral space between an art object and a spectator's experiencing of it; where art works come into being through the 'play' of others. His work re-conceives classical Buddhist and Tantric art in contemporary form; elicits notions of daily life as art; and stimulates particular ecological dynamics of the human being in relation to environment.

Ajaykumar's art practice is trans-disciplinary, intermedia, and single form, spanning the disciplines of: internet art, video art, combined media installation, sculpture, film, site-specific art, environmental art, performance/live art, design, architecture, sound art, creative writing, dance, theatre.

Ajaykumar is an academic at Goldsmiths University of London; member of the TrAIN - the research centre of the University of the Arts London, in Transnational Art, Identity and Nation; curator; and co-director of the shapes design studio: designing playful furniture, lighting, and gardens, and items that come into 'being' through the play of those who acquire or frequent them.