“Archipelago Archives” is an artistic research project that undertakes an imagined, ethnographic (re)construction of dances situated on an imaginary archipelago.
A starting premise is that the archipelago’s dances are shaped by historical dances from present-day Orissa (India) and central Java (Indonesia), as well as Asian and European colonial influences in these regions.
At stake in this (re)construction are not only the archipelago’s dances themselves, but also their historicity, locality and conditions of manifestation (labour, creation, divination etc). What is the precise nature of the archipelago’s political, commercial, cultural or temporal relation with India and Indonesia? What is the archipelago's destiny: military eradication, spiritual emancipation, or another fate? What insights may be unpacked from (re)construction of a people’s dances?
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Kiran Kumar (b.1983, Bangalore) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. His work focuses on the intersection of artistic and scientific modes of articulation within dance and somatic practice.

Kiran's website