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Film Maker & Digital Media Artist www.kooj.net A freelance film maker and video/digital media artist with a particular interest in migrant and black arts, activism and grass-roots production, Kooj's work has been screened, exhibited, and published nationally and internationally including Australia, USA, France and Eastern Europe. Recent work includes ‘Resonance’ installation shown at ISEA 2000 (Paris), ‘From Punjab To Football’ video for Manchester United FC (2001), the touring 'Boundless Sky' 3-screen Asian dance installation (2002), the interactive installation ‘Rekindle’ on permanent display at the Manchester Museum and the 'Terminal Frontiers' moving image installations for Virtual Migrants with Keith Piper (national tour 2004-5). Other output includes such films as ‘Raag, Glitter & Chips’ and ‘No Trace’, published digital media work such as the ‘Meta-Motion’ CD-ROM and articles such as for Variant magazine. Although born in Punjab, India, he has mostly lived in Britain and maintains an interest in fusion culture rooted in an Asian and migrant consciousness. He maintains an active engagement with political issues focusing on race in it’s broader sense. Collaborative work with other artists, particularly writers and performers, has been of continued interest along with his exploration of the wider processes and social contexts in which the production of aesthetic and cultural meaning takes place. His work critically draws on his wide range of experiences in various work sectors, environments, communities and activism. "I am interested in the underlying visual poetry, the distilled essence and critical processes that underpin our experience, and how there is an infinite weave between social and global processes and the personal and emotional markers which construct the dramas within our often mundane lives. Growing up with a rich mixture of fantastical Indian Cinema and sounds, surreal art, modern jazz, rock, punk and world musics, among other things gave me an impetus to continually explore different juxtapositions of form and ‘cultural’ approaches, while at the same time developing an engagement with various social movements and race politics in particular. Common aesthetic strands in my work include occurrences of threes and triptychs, non-linearity of narrative, and multiple re-formatting of a work to allow its core concept to better emerge." |
