Media is now art

The season for new media art kicks off with a show that has resonances of its embryology in Britain

When new technologies collide with contemporary art, it isn't entirely unexpected that people ask: "What's that supposed to be?" Especially in a country like India where even the concept of abstract art has had such a short life that its very existence is still being questioned at a popular level. Therefore, the leapfrogging into technology as art (or being used for art) is a generational vault that has left most Indians gasping.

Okay, make that some Indians, since exposure to new media arts has been so limited as to be almost negligible. Yet, at another level, India is coming of age in this very bold, high experimental field that has the world's better-known critics grasping at straws as they try to come to terms with artists who've now moved into a realm beyond conventional understanding. Yet, Indian new media works are gaining recognition around the world, cutting-edge international shows are finding their way into India, and at the crossroads of this activity is a dimunitive and young person who has lent financial muscle to create the only gallery for new media art in the country.

It isn't a conveniently located gallery "but foreign curators love the location"; it isn't the most expensive building on the block "but it's the most ambitious gallery space in the country", and it could have been built in the heart of the capital "but I'd rather use the money for the shows," Priti Paul, director, Apeejay Surrendra Group, and the force behind the Apeejay Media Gallery says.

Paul, for the record, had decided she wanted a gallery of her own while probably still in school, but this was a time when boutique art had become trendy. As a student of architecture, "I was fascinated by design and what it does for a city," she says almost right away, and "I'm fascinated by hotels as a building form."

(Also for the record, therefore, let it be known that Paul's Morocco-based husband has hired maverick architect Stuart Church to design a Mandarin Oriental hotel there that will be part Moorish, part colonial in its design, and that they're slated to be spending the better part of October in India on the lookout for antiques and art for the project.)

Therefore, with the Crosstown Traffic show that opens this weekend (and also runs the next weekend) at the Apeejay Media Gallery at Badarpur (on the Delhi-Haryana border), it is a coming of age for curator Pooja Sood who is so thrilled, her voice booms: "We have enquiries from all over the world for our shows."

Paul, though, is more excited about the fact that "we're flooded with offers to bring museum quality shows from abroad". Is that necessarily big cheese? For those who understand new media art, digital art, video art, experimental art, it is. "If you want to be a part of the world, you have to know the direction in which art is moving in the West," says a student from the Delhi College of Art.

The good thing about new media art is that it has such a short history, it has most countries clambering the wall to be part of the show. India, once again a late starter, is catching up faster then most. "That's because we have a huge computer literate population, and because we're big into films," says Paul.

Since the grant (growing bigger by the year) was never intended to be used for commercial conversion into profits, Paul's intrusion into the field has plugged the huge gap between Indian artists going overseas to show their work (think Nalini Malani at the Tate) to showing it in India, then showing it in India first, to finally, getting artists from overseas to show in India. "I was aware that art critics might not be able to critique the work initially, that audiences would not be mature enough," Paul says, "the cards were stacked against us", but "I wanted the shows to be of international standard".

Now in its fourth season, with India's first book on new media art published last year, the gallery has set its goal of six shows annually on a firm track. The season starts this weekend with the Crosstown Traffic show that highlights 15 years of FACT (Foundation for Creative Art and Technology), which started off as a small arts organisation in Liverpool, a fact Paul emphasises in the context of the Apeejay Media Gallery's beginnings.

The show, a medley of works that include projects, installations and commissions, is at the centre of the evolution of digital technologies and art, and collectively may have been viewed by as many as a million visitors. "I wanted it specifically for our Indian audience," stresses Paul.

In October, in collaboration with the Mexican Embassy in Delhi, Apeejay Media Gallery is organising a show on Mexican architecture in video (Arquitecturas Mexicanas) to be followed in November by a show on video sculpture in Germany (since 1963). "These are groundbreaking shows," Sood exclaims. "Our programme moves as the media evolves," explains Paul.

Naturally, therefore, experience, exposure and learning should determine the success of these programmes, more than the footfalls "" though it wouldn't hurt if more people turned up, even if just to ask: "What's that supposed to be?"