E.A.T. or Experiments in Art and Technology was an organised collective of artists, engineers and scientists founded by Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Whitman and Robert Rauschenberg in 1966 to forge a space of creative exchange and dialogue between experimental art practices and technological innovation.

In the period from late 1960s to early 70s, various E.A.T. initiatives such as ‘American Artists in India’, ‘Telex: Q&A’ and the ‘Anand Project’ were undertaken. As a part of these, several artists visited India for specific periods to study, teach, perform and work on their projects or develop collaborative inquiries with artists that they met during their stay. NID Ahmedabad, which happened to be one of the sites hosting the artists and engineers, witnessed and participated in some of these interdisciplinary transfers and encounters that took the shape of workshops, public performances, exhibitions and pedagogical frameworks. Some of the participants included John Cage, David Tudor, Lowell Cross, Jared Bark, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer and many more.

Participants : Ranjit Menon (30th July) , Joanna Griffin (13th August) , Julie Martin (27th August), Paul Purgas (10th September), Alexander Keefe (10th September), You Nakai (24th September) 

Assembly and Facilitation by Suvani Suri & Shreyasi Pathak
Supported by Tanishka Kachru & Lalitha Poluru | Visual Design by Sharmistha Poddar

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Session 01 | Friday, July 30, 19:30 hours | NID Archives' Public Programmes 2021-22| E.A.T. India

Ranjit and Kristian are both designers/artists from Helsinki, Finland. In this exchange, they will briefly introduce their chance encounters with the E.A.T. archives at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in 2018. The conversation will further open up a discussion on the mediating influences of institutional bureaucracy and obsolete technology on complex cultural heritage.

The NID Archives inaugural series into the period of the E.A.T. happenings in India, retracing the historical trajectories and residues of the exchanges that took place then. Through an assembly of online lectures, conversations, revisitations and performances, the series is an attempt to re-read the ‘E.A.T. in India’ chapter from our contemporary location.

Registration Link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Fr0D73MnTUqY7Af0i0eKwA