Matti Braun

Seeing Matti Braun’s batiks and silk paintings in the exhibition space, and how he presents historical saris in the same context, will provide an inkling of what it means that the artist examines unexpected, often little-known effects of intercultural dynamics, and reveals patterns of artistic migration and of cultural neglect. Here his enchantingly beautiful silk painting, which touches on Minimalism as well as Pop Art, there the historical fabrics of a traditional garment, a wrap-around skirt worn from India to Nepal and which to the wearer provides, in addition to festive occasions, almost superpractical possibilities in the daily life of subtropical countries, and which today is traded at auctions, and can be found mounted and framed as a picture in museums in Asia and Europe. The book at hand goes one step further and offers comprehensive insights into the associative network that has formed the basis of Matti Braun’s work in recent years. Matti Braun and co-editors Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay and Beth Citron reveal: the early science fiction culture of the Indian subcontinent; the stories of the various magazines, authors, and books; the effects on Bollywood; and the political ambitions of the Indian space program A truly exhilarating story!

Matti Braun, b. 1968, investigates with his work the unexpected, often little-knwon effects of cross-cultural dynamics, making visible patterns of artistic migrations and cultural misrecognitions. The artist’s exhibitions have often been organized around a specific example of such appropriation, taking, for instance, an elaborate web of interdisciplinary associations spun around the a sequence of Satyajit Rays’ never realized script The Alien, in which an alien’s spaceship lands on a lotus blossom-pond and sinks to the ground. This story works as point of departure for displays that include textile works, objects, photographs and large-scale installations, which are now widely spread in the new book. In 2019 he was present with his work at Rubin Museum of Art in New York. Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is a researcher at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Oslo, Norway, in the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages. His main project is Lifetimes with the section The Lifetimes of Epidemics in Europe and the Middle East. His main interest ist he work on future fictions and science fiction from an STS and history of science perspective, therefore he works on multiple media, including texts, graphic novels, films, tv, videogames, and visual arts. He is producing the documentary film KALPAVIGYAN, directed by Arnunava Gangopadhyay and author of numerous texts on Bengal Scifi in internationl magazines. Beth Citron, is the Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Rubin Museum. Her exhibitions for the Rubin Museum have included Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything (2016), Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India (2014), Witness at a Crossroads: Photographer Marc Riboud in Asia (2014), and the three-part exhibition series Modernist Art from India (2011–13). She completed a PhD in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught in the Art History Department at New York University, from which she also earned a BA in Fine Arts. Ranen Gosh is a Bengal sci-fi author who extend his writing on the background of Scifi. He is also wrting for the sci-fi online magazine Kalpabiswa in Bengali languge. Matthia Löbke, born 1963, artistic director of the Kunstverein Heilbronn, is curator and publishes monographic catalogs, on artists including Yoshitaka Amano, Markus Lüpertz, Olaf Metzel, Enoc Perez, Michael Schmidt, Michael Venezia, Silke Wagner. In Cologne she was an assistant to Donald Judd and gained her doctorate on Dan Flavin. Amrita Shah is a journalist and writer. She has worked for Time magazine, edited Debonair and Elle and been a contributing editor with The Indian Express. She is an alumna of the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University and Visiting Faculty at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.