Srinivas Harivanam
bangaloREsident-Expanded@Lichtenberg Studios

Srinivas_Lichtenberg © © Srinivas Harivanam Srinivas Harivanam

Srinivas Harivanam (b.1992, Bellary, Karnataka India) is a media artist based in Bangalore. His practice is extruding from his experiences structured around the discomposure and trauma caused by the operation of caste infrastructures. His excavation tools are speculations as a mode to re-code linear timelines - to create friction and study them in a tribological sense. He understands tribology as a study of material properties concerning the sliding of two surfaces and the outcome of the same, which he reinterprets in the context of social surfaces.

His non-laminar research consists of wandering, reading, and auto-ethnographic approaches. His design interventions are situated as site-specific installations, object modifications, tweaking, and drawings.

Srinivas was artist-in-residence for KHOJ Peers 2021, New Delhi. He studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. He also takes teaching assignments for Kannada-speaking children on design thinking.

Planned project

During his stay at Lichtenberg Studios, he will continue to inquire into frictional spaces. He defines friction as a flux, a remanence of history in spaces that materialises in actions and forms. He is interested in looking at the German unification as a departure point in his research by concentrating on architectural settings, spatial differences, and expressions formed on walls and noises. Particularly informed by the present political and cultural situations globally. By hooking on his recent research on the spine as a media and metaphor in the different contexts of the biosphere, he sees public space as a spine for society.

My stay during the residency at Lichtenburg studio was a self-exploratory research lab and became a place and time for me to reflect on my practice. The lab for me was distributed with a dedicated workshop studio space, local bicycle rides, conversations with local creative practitioners, traveling around the city on the local trains, and a couple of chances to meet with scholars and academics.

Srinivas H_Lichtenberg © © Srinivas Harivanam Srinivas Harivanam_1

The time at residency allowed me to involve in various discussions related to the politics of space, language, and identities. And a chance to investigate multiple happenings in contemporary art within Berlin and Germany. Having spent some days cycling around the Lichtenburg district and the surrounding areas, the foregrounding feature that was attractive to me most was the city's voices and histories narrated on its skin and architectural settings.

Srinivas H_Lichtenberg 2 © © Srinivas Harivanam Srinivas Harivanam_2

My curiosity about the river spree and Rummesldburg bay landscape led me to delve into stories around it from the GDR times to today. Particularly interested in the recent developments in politics around the bay region due to construction activities. The bay has also been under a lot of focus for the last few years because of intense, rapid development and the consequence of these changes in the landscape.

The research unfolded with an urban site-specific installation in a move to erase the fences and walls around Rummesldburg bay, Berlin. The interventions were an attempt to dispel the fence, which acts as a medium, to justify the bifurcation by building costly condominiums and corporate buildings, flagging the possibilities of cultural space and social housing, and allowing the real estate price to rise. Intervention intends to comment on and antithesis to the larger border systems, boundaries, exclusions, and discriminations worldwide, which manifest in human gaze to allow human suffering possible.

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Srinivas Harivanam bangaloREsident-Expanded@Lichtenberg Studios

Srinivas Harivanam@Lichtenberg Studios (June-July 2022)

Srinivas Harivanam
bangaloREsident-Expanded@Lichtenberg Studios