BLEED 2024

2024

Visual Arts; Offsite Project

Artist/s: Nithya Nagarajan, Vishal Kumaraswamy, Akil Ahamat, Kalanjay Dhir, Serwah Attafuah

BLEED (Biennial Live Event in the Everyday Digital) interrogates the relationship between the digital and the live. Developing new contemporary art practices that are both enabled by and critical of the digital public sphere, BLEED’s unique model allows artists and audiences to create and experience cutting-edge art, culture and ideas.

Across diverse mediums, time zones and borders, BLEED probes the extent to which digital technology can deepen our understanding of one another. In 2024, BLEED expands the conversation with a consortium of national partners including Arts House (VIC), Campbelltown Arts Centre (NSW) and PICA – Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (WA). The program features artists across this continent and beyond.

From URL to IRL and back again, BLEED, and the artworks and Echo public programs presented as part of it, greet audiences where they already reside: in their communities, hyper-connected and virtually networked.

‘pinch/zoom/scroll/hover’ gestures at notions of sensation (embodied/internal) and perception (external/expressed) through a range of exchanges between Nithya (based in Sydney) and Vishal (based in Bengaluru). It is a piece of networked writing reflecting the conditions of the collaboration itself, across text, audio (voice notes) and videos/gifs. Fractured, asynchronous, simultaneous and stretched across time/space/internet bandwidth, the writing draws from a lineage of net.art and hypertext.

‘OFFLINE AND LOADING’ by multidisciplinary artist, Serwah Attafuah, explores the connections between 16th-century Dutch Vanitas still lifes and contemporary Ghanaian Sakawa rituals, creating a provocative dialogue between historical European art and modern African digital spirituality.

‘A Vanishing Point’ is the first collaboration between Akil Ahamat and Kalanjay Dhir. The artwork follows Ash, a recently cremated person, and its unseen friend, Wind. ‘A Vanishing Point’ is staged in the games engine, Unreal Engine 5. Using advanced particle simulation and high resolution environment rendering overlayed with simplistic two-dimensional animation, the work plays with histories of representation, image-making and belief.