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An 17ú Comhdháil de chuid Chumann na Taighde Ealaíonta (SAR)

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Submission Number: 275
Submission ID: 337
Submission UUID: 6653cfc3-7e84-4d16-90bd-d7cbd0b7ed60

Cruthaithe: Sat, 28 Feb 2026 - 22:36
Déanta: Mon, 2 Mar 2026 - 14:41
Changed: Wed, 13 May 2026 - 08:38

Remote IP address: 122.172.80.233
Submitted by: Anonymous
Teanga: English

Is draft: Níl
Current page: webform_confirmation

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Given name Junuka
Surname Deshpande
Email junuka.deshpande@manipal.edu
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Title Drawing from the cracks, an enquiry into soil and witnessing
Format Project presentation
Main language English
Abstract This project explores urban transformation through a quiet, persistent lens of soil as a witness and as a feminist voice of dissent from the cracks of a rapidly transforming landscape in one of the most populated and culturally diverse countries.Through the practice of image-making, recording, drawing and observing at infrastructural construction sites in the city, the project listens to the cracks,the pits,the heaps of rubble,and the life it holds, revealing resistance in the liminal spaces between the increasingly contrasting binary of soil and concrete.To crack open is, to speak, to utter. In times of mainstreamed majoritarian discourses, social ruptures and normalised violence amidst the deceptive illusion of technological advancement, the observation of physicality of soil in the cracks, opens possibilities to listen to minoritised, generative force, challenging the aggressive capitalist force of exploitation, growth, and control that drives the current narrative of homogenous infrastructural development in an environmentally and culturally diverse context.
Through the textures,traces and marks in the physical space of cracks under flux, photographic and drawn observations of bodies-human and more than human,machines,lands and labour,forms and formations of soil,cement, stones and their variants,the project aims to pay attention to the uncertainty, vulnerability and the temporality of this endangered socioecological and political landscape under transformation, that the binaries of progress abandon.
The method of artistic practice is in being vulnerable, interrogative and persistent to become the cracks and the soil, countering the dominant linear narratives of progress by existing and witnessing.By listening to and from the cracks as a physical,representational and phenomenological world,the project invites sensing the transformation of the layered, heterogeneous, and alive earth we build on.
Link to the Exposition https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/4196268/4196269
Image soilleftover_swept_1.jpg
Short biographies of the presenter(s)
  • Junuka's interest is rooted in observation, as an artist and an educator, which informs her artistic sense-making through drawing, sound, and material play. With a background in documentary filmmaking, she critiques the implicit assumptions of hierarchy in representational practices. Her current practice explores the affective and vulnerable dimensions of both external and internal worlds. Junuka teaches at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bangalore, India.
Previous presentations or iterations of the research https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1807187/1807188
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3129144/3129145
At 16th SAR conference: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2759372/3513874
Additional information Project presentation with some physical work
Spatial and technical requirements a room with a good light, projector, speaker, table, other technical help
Potential risks or ethical concerns
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An 17ú Comhdháil de chuid Chumann na Taighde Ealaíonta (SAR)

Welcome to SAR 2026

Endangered Conceptual Worlds

The 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research takes place from 23 to 26 June 2026. Hosted by the University of Galway on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, the Forum addresses the challenges of Endangered Conceptual Worlds. As the 17th annual conference of the Society for Artistic Research it is the largest conference on practice-based research within and through the arts, bringing together more than 300 international participants: leading practitioners, scholars and policymakers from the entire range of arts-based disciplines.

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Slightly extended deadline for submissions

The 2026 Forum on Artistic Research website has been inaccessible for several hours on Friday night and Saturday morning. Unfortunately, an update to the web server was scheduled to take place, which automatically activated maintenance mode and prevented any work on the submissions during the night and the next morning. We have therefore decided to slightly extend the deadline for submissions to Monday 2 March 2026 at 23:59 GMT. Feel free to work on your proposals until then.