VELOCITY PIECES
Billboard Art (2019 - ongoing)“Grover writes contemplative pieces that anyone can identify with.” - HT Mint Lounge
“For contemporary artist Amitesh Grover, the city is a stage and its people, its astute actors.” - The Indian Express
“The board—a public entity—conveys a private intent, and takes over the road as a spectacle.” - Plural Futures
“A new way of understanding India’s Modern and contemporary art” - The Art Newspaper
For over two years (and counting), I have produced verbal compositions that have shone down from a billboard installed at Kasturba Gandhi Marg (Central Delhi), to offer poetry to passers-by and encourage them to follow the board's various lyrical instructions. The board-poems have been read against the backdrop of weeks of unrest and protest that followed the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens bill; they have been viewed in the wake of the precarity of living during the pandemic; they have occupied the city through the changing landscape and the meanings of citizenry over the last two years. Merging theatricality and everyday rituals, I have written these board-poems to respond to the turbulence of the moment with tenderness and urgency. The billboard is a site of political incantation —it is a call to halt, to reflect upon the conditions of contemporary living. I have written and produced 200 board-poems over a span of three years since the project opened to the public in 2019. The billboard is still up and running at its original installation space in Central Delhi.
My board-poems propose a new activity to be performed every week, to help find out what our relationship with the world might be under the special conditions of a performed act. My poems are inspired by the crisis-ridden conditions we live in, and by those who experience precarity in profound ways. Some acts involve multiple people, but occasionally they are solitary ones, to be carried out without an audience. Every piece of useful fiction intends to produce a spontaneous choreography for the everyday, an alternative momentum, a velocity to rehearse a different temper for our times.
Conceived & Written by Amitesh Grover | Proofing by Sarah Mariam | Produced by Goethe Instiute / Max Mueller Bhavan, India | Acknowledgement: 100 Velocity Pieces is realised within the framework of Five Million Incidents, 2019-2020 supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective | Venue: New Delhi & Kolkata
Duration: Three years and counting | Language: English | Medium: Public display boards of varying sizes installed at public sites
