Amar Kanwar's The Torn First Pages is an ode to the thousands engaged in the struggle for democracy in Burma. It is published in honor of the bookshop owner Ko Than Htay, who was imprisoned for removing the first pages of all books and journals that contained ideological propaganda from the military regime.
This catalogue is an extension of an ongoing research and exhibition project that TBA21 has supported since its inception in 2006. The Sovereign Forest renders visible and collects evidence of what has hitherto been hidden and suppressed within the site of a “modern war,” in which industrial interventions have reshaped and permanently destroyed parts of the landscape of the Indian state of Odisha for over a decade, leaving villagers in suffering and devastation. The ambitious catalogue attempts to reopen and deepen discussions posed by the exhibition by bringing together a variety of voices from academic and activist backgrounds, factual and intimate narratives and interviews, image documentation, and additional documents. Equally, these complex and varied narratives help to unfold a multiplicity of different knowledges and testimonies on this obscured and intricate conflict. Copublished with Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Yorkshire Sculpture Park on the occasion of the eponymous Vienna exhibition, November 23, 2013–March 23, 2014. Contributors Sudha Bharadwaj, Vrinda Grover, Monika Halkort, Amar Kanwar, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sudhir Pattnaik, Usha Ramanathan, James C. Scott, Shiv Visvanathan
Imagine nineteen sheets of paper floating forever in the wind. Imagine the simultaneous viewing of multiple time. Imagine time that is filled with as many silences as with words. Imagine the slow gathering together of time. Moment by moment. Evidence by evidence. Imagine the formal presentation of poetry as evidence in a future war crimes tribunal. “This book represents a moment in a life and oeuvre constantly in flux, always branching out and converging, following a course, but at times deliberately diverging, because there is time, or time can be found—to breathe, to walk, to pause, to move on, to circle. There is poetry in Amar Kanwar’s words and lyricism in his films—both method and metaphor alike by which life’s distillation and dissipation become comprehensible and deeper knowledge can be gained. Space can be grasped through time, time through poetry. What is at stake is always the life of the individual, the rules of society, power, abuse, violence, the power to enlighten and the courage to change.” Urs Stahel