In this episode of Living with the River, we are in conversation with Sonal Jain. Sonal is an art practitioner based out of Shillong and she is also one half of the Desire Machine Collective. She has been engaged in creating prolific bodies of work exploring the relationships between ecology, humans, and the machine- in one instance, by quite literally creating her project on a ferry, an object occupying and negotiating the space between land and water.

This discussion is an attempt by me to place Sonal’s work into my previously existing vocabulary and, therefore, much of the conversation circles around her encounters with the river, the meaning of collaborative work in her projects, and the negotiation of identity in the North East.

But as one progresses further into the interview it will become clear that these strict measurements of the breadth and depth of her work are not sufficient and one needs a free-r vocabulary to speak about a work which negotiates so many subjects- land, water, time, space, memory, and geography, and through so many different mediums- through performance, the use of technology, through film and sound. Guest: Sonal Jain

Host: Vedika Pareek, Radhika Goswami

Sound: Aditya Kapoor Visuals: Pranjeevan Adhikary, Siddhanth Purkayastha