"It is our collective imagination that has led to a certain kind of technological future, and artists are crucial to critically reimagine this future."
Indranjan Banerjee, Senior Curator, Khoj Studios
‘Arts and Technologies in India: Reimagining the Future’ foregrounds a new generation of artists in India developing novel applications of advanced technologies, critiquing their biases, and engaging audiences in the imagination of digital futures. These artists are diversifying cultural perceptions of technologies from AI to gaming, inspiring new digital aesthetics, redeveloping datasets, and offering new perspectives on the future of creativity, technology and society.
Drawing on survey data, desk research, and roundtables in Bengaluru, New Delhi, and online with over 30 practitioners, this report provides insight into the ideas informing the arts and technologies ecosystem in India; the people and practices shaping the ecosystem; and the opportunities to enable international collaboration and creative innovation with one of the world’s fasted growing tech ecosystems. The report was commissioned by British Council, and authored in collaboration with Unbox Cultural Futures.
Key findings include
Ideas
- Cultural aesthetics: Artists are creatively contextualising technologies, challenging technological bias and amplifying India’s culture in visions of the future.
- Social impact: Artists are using technology as a creative medium through which to interrogate technology and its impact on society.
- Audience engagement: Artists working with technology are pushing back against systemic barriers to create more inclusive and representative spaces for new and unexpected audiences.
People and practices
- Interdisciplinary practice: Innovation with arts and technologies is often a result of personal practices that span diverse art forms and areas of specialist expertise.
- Challenges faced by practitioners: Challenges include a fragmented ecosystem, lack of infrastructure and prevalence of traditional power dynamics.
Opportunities for international collaboration
- Support international communities of practice: Expand and support existing communities of practice to ensure international participation, convening practitioners across disciplines through sustained interventions.
- Facilitate skills sharing: Support knowledge and skill sharing, in particular, around how to effectively organise communities of practice, and how other countries support work with arts and technologies, both in the public and private realm.
- Offer practical support: Offer practical support to India's arts and technologies ecosystem, addressing the logistical, administrative, and bureaucratic challenges faced by artists.
- Broker commercial partnerships: Broker commercial partnerships to develop mutually beneficial connections for artists.
