biographical
statement
Kuljit
'Kooj' Chuhan
Kooj traverses a range of
disciplines. Such as video and digital media practice and teaching;
cultural development; as a creative producer; a collaborative audio-visual
project consultant for museums; and in education, curriculum and learning
development. In addition to his significant professional standing
including work with artists such as Keith Piper, Kooj has extensively
worked with various communities and was recently a senior manager at
Community Arts North West.
As a media artist he wants
to progress cultural, artistic, social and historical issues within broad,
global and local contexts. Kooj was born in India and maintains a
diaspora sensibility, always keen to involve migrant perspectives in his
work. Aesthetic concerns include the interface between documentary,
fiction and reality; non-linear narratives and interactivity; manipulating
the ‘real’ between music and moving image; and post-colonial cultural
development. He lectures in contemporary film (directing, music, theory)
at Manchester Metropolitan University and has been exhibited and published
across the UK and internationally, featuring at festivals such as VIDEO
POSITIVE, ISEA and SIGGRAPH.
Kooj has founded and run a
number of groups and organisations such as the Virtual Migrants artists
collective focusing on race, migration and globalisation. For a number of
years Kooj has been working with museums either as an artist, producer or
cultural consultant. He pioneered the “Collective Conversations”
methodology at the Manchester Museum which facilitates dialogues and
co-production with communities of interest; and worked with a partnership
of eight museums and galleries on a major project about Manchester’s links
with transatlantic slavery.
He has a
long-standing interest in education in its broadest sense and has worked
as a teacher in a range of environments both formal and informal. Other
previous work has been as a scientist (his first degree was in biology), a
community worker for voluntary organisations as well as local authorities,
and as a professional musician. He also maintains an active involvement in
various movements for positive social change.
"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."
"evocative,
metaphorical and at times quite poetic"
Robert
Clark, The Guardian
"Kuljit
'Kooj' Chuhan successfully grapples with some mighty issues … a powerful
declaration of identity and faith amidst the pressures of globalisation."
Tim Birch, City Life
"this memorable and passionate show in which art practice, education and politics are inseparable"
Nicky Bird, Art Monthly
"…brings
to life the many stories of migration … with a level of intimacy unusual
in multimedia works - a significant intervention in the struggle to tell our
histories and experiences."
Arun Kundnani, Institute of Race Relations, UK
“…
leaves the audience reverberating with a magical tapestry of the moving
image!”
Alnoor Mitha, SHISHA
(South Asian Crafts and Visual Arts Network, UK)
"The
best Museum images I've seen for a long time ... very dramatic and really
quite beautiful."
Bernadette
Lynch, The Manchester Museum, UK
Web links:
Virtual Migrants: digital art
collective
http://www.virtualmigrants.com
SIGGRAPH 2007 "Global Eyes" Art
Exhibition and Digital Performance
www.siggraph.org/s2007/attendees/art/performance.html
ISEA 2006 International
Symposium on Electronic Art (San Jose, USA)
http://2006.01sj.org/content/view/574/145/
A Sense Of Place international
conference on displacement/integration in Europe through arts, culture and
media
http://www.asenseofplace.org.uk/speakers.php?speaker=kchuhan
Explore, Expand, Exchange museum
arts project
http://www.exploreexpandexchange.net/artists.html
ISEA 2000 International
Symposium on Electronic Art (Paris, France)
http://www.isea2000.com/an/pop_symp_village.htm
Mesh 2000 (Journal of
Experimenta, creativity and technology organisation, Australia)
http://www.experimenta.org/mesh/mesh_2000/index.htm#virtual
International Association of
Labour Museums newsletter (Denmark)
http://www.worklab.dk/nl4-14.htm
Through The Looking Glass
exhibition (Ohio, USA)
http://www.voyd.com/ttlg/textual/kuljit.htm
Bolton Mental Health Services
– CD-ROM project
http://www.nimhenorthwest.org.uk/LINK2_p8.pdf
Virtual Revolutions CD-ROM
http://acoustic.space.re-lab.net/vr-cdrom.php
Metaceptive Media Production
www.metaceptive.net
Synopsis of profile,
skills and experience:
-
Kooj
is one of the leading artists in his genre in North-West England,
and one of the very few from the Black/migrant communities.
His range of clients have included key art galleries and museums,
the NHS and Manchester United F.C.
-
His
work has been screened, exhibited and published nationally and internationally.
His videos have been shown at festivals including Kino
(Manchester), Bite The Mango (Bradford), Fillum (London) and BlackScreen
(Liverpool). His digital
multimedia artworks have been exhibited internationally including at
Video Positive '95 and '97, and at ISEA '98 and 2000.
-
Kooj
has a long-standing and passionate commitment to film and related moving
image practice. He was
accepted for an MA in Drama Film Production (Directing) at NSFTV, although conflicting priorities forced him to refuse the offer
yet this then allowed immersion in new media art.
He currently lectures directing & production in
Contemporary Film & Video (Manchester Metropolitan University).
For four years (98-03) he was on the board of directors for FACT
(Foundation for Arts & Creative Technology) during the development
of the FACT centre.
-
Kooj’s
portfolio of creative work with communities of all kinds is
extensive and in depth. He first worked at Community Arts Workshop in
1984 from a belief in principles of creative democracy. He has
continued in this field ever since, has taught on an HND course “Arts in
a Community Context”, has supporting the degree course at LIPA, and was
recently Principle Artistic Manager at Community Arts North West.
-
In
his digital artworks he uses experiments with embedded video, while
within his video productions he integrates multimedia visual
techniques; techniques and approaches from one merge with the other.
His work is always poetic and narrative, whether factual or
fictional. His aesthetic
approach reflects his interest in fusion culture rooted in an
Asian and migrant consciousness, along with a playful deconstruction of
narrative. He is currently extending his work in collaboration
with live performance.
-
Originally
a professional musician with both science and social science degrees,
Kooj has been making videos since 1988, and electronic moving-image
artworks since 1994. For
ten years he was manager of Black Issues in Community Art (BICA)
project, delivering video production and training at all
levels from introductory to semi-broadcast.
Currently he is a freelance video and digital artist.
-
He
maintains an active engagement with political issues focusing on race
in it’s broader sense; he was a founding member of the Black Arts
Alliance and also chaired a committee which organised and led a major
national anti-racist campaign and demonstration in Manchester.
He later co-founded the Fresh Roots Video Festival for video work
by, involving or giving voice to disempowered groups, and also founded
Virtual Migrants – a digital art group focusing on issues of race,
migration and globalisation. These
and other relevant issues continue to influence and inspire his own
practice.
-
Through
a range of involvement in productions along with undertaking a variety
of short courses he has developed skills in video production,
scriptwriting and directing, plus in interactive multimedia,
internet and installation-based art..
He is familiar with a broad range of industry software including
Premiere, After-Effects, Photoshop, Director, Sound-Forge, Illustrator,
Final Cut, DreamWeaver, Flash. He is currently working also with Isadora, Resolume and Grid in
addition to Director for use with live performance.
-
Kooj’s
range of experience is much wider than simply as an artist, in
particular having worked within community development, adult education,
schools, the music world, various communities of diverse origins, as a
scientist and in a variety of activist roles.
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