The ecologies of technological experimentation: Sheba Chhachhi’s multimedia environments

This article concentrates on the multimedia installations of the feminist artist Sheba Chhachhi. Her art practice is situated in such diverse ecologies of pedagogic and technological experimentation as, first, her own experiences of sharing visual communications skills with urban and rural activists in the women’s movement and presenting her photographs in slums and women’s workshops, and later showing her video installations in a gallery setting, a mall and community centre. Secondly, the historic multimedia environments of the National Institute of Design (Dashrath Patel was the founder-secretary of NID and a mentor figure to Chhachhi) will be investigated; and finally, the discussion encompasses the jugaad-oriented entrepreneurship of artisans in India’s street-markets whose creative improvisations modify the techno-kitsch that washes up on our shores as the flotsam of globalisation.