FREE TO AIR

Exhibitions, screenings and events exploring the multiple meanings of freedom in contemporary society

Free to Air is a series of exhibitions and events that will extend across London over a four-year period. Taking as its starting point Roosevelt’s famous ‘four freedoms’ – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear – it sets out to explore some of the multiple meanings of ‘freedom’ in contemporary society.

Genesis
September – October 2009

www.freetoair.org.uk

Ode to a Dark Star
23rd April – 30th September 2009
Video Installation
duration 1 hour

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Henley Street
Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6QW

Ode to a Dark Star is a response to the recent discovery of Shakespeare’s portrait. Inspired by the Sonnets, the installation seeks to present the nature of reflections, mysteries, authenticity, love, loss, beauty and ambiguous identities.
In this film, Chakravarthi inhabits a form of garment for theatrical presentation. He suggests both genders, meticulously detailing his interpretations of the legacy of Shakespeare’s texts, creating a form of refection and projection with his self-image and identity placed within a reservoir of quiet symbolic movements.
Ode to a Dark Star is a portrait of possibilities and a landscape of familiarity. Cultural, historic and personal information is blended, then lost again, within each slow and measured movement, with the slowness of the performance resonating the very practice of painting, without ever allowing the canvas to fix.

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George Chakravarthi UnSeen DVD

George Chakravarthi UnSeen is a collection of Chakravarthi's early photographic self-portraits. Mostly unseen and made with low costs and in low conditions, he speaks about them for the first time and reveals how and why these early portraits were created and informed his current artistic practice. In conversation with Andrew Mitchelson, Chakravarthi talks about his early influences and experiences of being raised in India, childhood experiences in London and being an outsider in both cultures.
George Chakravarthi and Live Art Development Agency, 2009, DVD-PAL, 65 minutes. Available online now.

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The Live Art Development Agency was founded in 1999 to support the proliferation of Live Art practices and critical discourses in the UK and internationally.
The Agency is celebrating its tenth anniversary through a special series of projects including a new commissioned film by George Chakravarthi.
Masking is a form of dehumanisation of the self. Its primary concern is to disguise and conceal ones’ identity and personality. It allows the ‘masker’ to create and manipulate multiple personas, forms and racial and gender identities. Inspired by sex dolls and stereotypical images of women in pornography, Masking will be posted online throughout 2009 on YouTube:

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