Transmission October 19th Nihkil Vettukattil

Nihkil Vettukattil is an artist and writer based in Oslo. His practice concerns the role of representation and image-making processes in framing and remaking lived experience. Through a range of mediums, his work often explores the ways cultural forms can mediate everyday life and historical time. https://www.nikhilvettukattil.com/

Nihkil Vettukattil introduced us to one of his works An analogue for listening which is best described in this link:https://flatness.eu/contributors/nikhil_vettukattil/

Nihkil has a background in philosophy and incorporates the written word in his practice. Nihkil then talks about Carl Schmitt the controversial legal theorist with links to Nazism who wrote a book called on the crisis of parliamentary democracy.
Carl Schmitt has an interest in Marxism and guerilla warfare and Marx uses a curious phrase the dictatorship of the proletariat which is contrary to the kind of contemporary notion of parliamentary democracy.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is described thus “the assumption of political power by the proletariat with concomitant repression of previously controlling or governing classes that in Marxist philosophy is considered an essential preliminary to establishment of the classless state.”
Nihkil then went onto talk about representation, sovereignty and states of emergency and how democratic is a democracy.
https://parisinstitute.org/depictions-article-covid-19-and-state-of-exception-medicine-politics-and-the-epidemic-state/

https://www.artforum.com/picks/the-fountain-show-ii-86787
Nikhil Vettukattil’s Circulation (Fluidics 0 gate), 2021, installed above a fireplace, pumps fake blood through PVC tubing:

Nihkil then talks about physical computing specifically fluidics in regards to his next project.
https://www.century.earth/ Century is an installation of one hundred novels from 1920 to 2020 when the exhibition opens and each book is binded with the binary code for that year:

https://www.aqnb.com/2021/01/19/matilda-tjader-nikhil-vettukattil-daemon-on-simulating-the-breakdown-of-memory-feeling-on-host-for-country-music/
Nihkil talks about his collaboration with Matilda Tjader on Host.
To round the talk off Nihkul played Fremmedgjøring.

Conclusion: A very informative lecture and Nihkul is a very intelligent artist with some great concepts which I admit went straight over my head but impressive nonetheless.