A beginning for us all
ਮਾਮਲਾ Māmalā / ਗੰਦਗੀ Gadagī / Matter / Contamination
WE used to live in the village, we welcomed visitors from abroad, they would come here to seek out their futures, we would get together, cook, sleep, fight and imagine the future.
The village was born in North India, it was later reborn as a vessel. It will visit many sites in the future. It is composed of stories, migrants, materials, houses, biologies, technologies, mycologies, and futures, but most of all it’s the inhabitants who contaminate and make the village.
This place will move across time and space. It will have visitations on Earth. The sites of the visits will be evolving and sprawling transformations of architectures, educations, performances, smells, technologies and world making exercises.
This a space to conjure another set of polyphonic futures, where we gather together to experience the reverberations of time and space. I want you to come and discover the traces of love, longing and possibility that make life possible.
Most of all, I want you to realize that we can work together to make another end of the world possible, one that houses all of us.
dankEconogy1_ALIENVillage is a speculative commons. It is a vessel that will ‘visit’ sites and contaminate them forever.
Visit the project microsite at www.danknessarchive.com
Sahjan has been working as an Incidental Artist across the last 18 months developing this multi-stranded project through workshops and collaborations with artists, their mom, technologists, bioscientists, school children, communities with Punjabi heritage, ceramicists and Eastside Projects. dankEconogy1_ALIENVillage will arrive online and in Eastside Projects' main gallery on 6 October 2023, and travel to Kunsthal Gent in Belgium in early 2024.
List of Collaborators Sophie Chapman, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Matt Gale, Rob Sollis, Zach Dawson, Opinderjit Takhar and Center for Sikh and Panjabi Studies, Avtar Singh, Punjabi Women's Writing Group, Harry and Robin at An Endless Supply, Canaan Brown, Taran Singh, Melita Gandham, Sima Gonsai, Bhulla Beghal, Antonio Roberts, Rubie Green, Amy Pennington, Suzi Osborn, Matt Foster and Plane Structure.
Manor Park School: Saj, Lezli, Mahnoor, Amina, Ayana, Fatima, Fatimah, Sheymaa, Amaan, Aseel.
All the participants of the Punjabi Village Workshops who wonderfully contributed stories, anecdotes, images, memories, time, and fantasies to the development of a living breathing archive.
ALIENVillage is co-commissioned by Eastside Projects, Kunsthal Gent, and UP Projects and supported by Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Sahjan Kooner is an amalgamation of inherited worlds and speculative futures, they work in a freelance capacity to support their practice and owe a great deal to their family, they are a student of the dream state. Using video and installation, they create expansive worlds that explore the traces of love, hope and imagination that make our lives possible, along with examining a debris of questions around the technological, social, and racialised structures that augment life. They live and work in Wolverhampton.
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