Sarker Protick
Constructed Worlds: breaking down a photo series
22. 7. – 3. 8. 24
About the course
‘World building’ is a pivotal process in literature for constructing immersive worlds within the confines of a story. It involves creating intricate landscapes, cultures, histories, and arrangements unique to the narrative universe. It not only provides a backdrop, but also adds depth, texture, and authenticity. The author invites readers into these alternate realities through detailed descriptions, consistent imagery, and richly developed characters.
The course will use ‘world-building’ as a basis for expansion to assess and gain a deeper understanding of how a photo series can develop further. What do our immediate natural environment and infrastructures represent about the current time or the future past? How do we utilize weather patterns, light, and atmosphere to introduce various cycles? How do form, color, or their absence influence different mind states? By examining the spatial histories of a place, utilizing personal accounts to shape directives, and selecting from various modes of image-making, distinctive qualities can be attained within a body of work.
Participants are encouraged to bring at least one ongoing series they are currently pursuing or wish to commit to long-term. Through collective discourse and exercises, one-on-one interactions, and artist-led lectures encompassing personal practice and other relevant works in photography, film, and books, the module aims to encourage students not to limit themselves to being image producers but also to become auteurs of their work.
key data
- Venue
- Festung Hohensalzburg
- Date
- 22. 7. – 3. 8. 24
- Teaching language(s)
- English, Bangla
- What to bring
- Laptop (with basic photo-editing software [Photoshop, Adobe Bridge], digital camera (Phone, DSLRS or any other types), material from ongoing projects (photographs, archival material, notes-scans, about 60-100 small working prints)
- Maximum number of participants
- 20
- Participation fee
- 670 Euro (reduced 495 Euro)
Sarker Protick
Sarker Protick has developed a practice that combines his roles as an image-maker, a teacher and—infrequently—a curator. His often minimal, suspended and atmospheric visuals are coherently open with vast and solemn distance. Working with photography, video and sound, Protick’s works are built on long-term surveys rooted in Bangladesh and the larger region of Bengal. The form and materiality of his works often morph into the physicality of time—its raptures and our inability to grasp or hold time, the process of image-making as the way to expand time. Here we don’t experience time as moving in a straight line, but rather experience it slowing down, recurring, having dips and curves, at times being in a state of constant flux.
Protick studied at the South Asian Media Institute – Pathshala in Dhaka, where he has also been teaching for the past ten years. Protick is a co-curator of Chobi Mela, the longest running international photography festival in Asia. His work has received multiple awards and recognitions, including Joop Swart Masterclass, Foam Talent, Light Work Residency, Magnum Foundation Fund, World Press Photo Award, and others. Protick is represented by Shrine Empire in Delhi.
Website
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2022 Nirobodhi (Till Time Stand Still) by Sarker Protick. Shrine Empire, Delhi, IN. 2019 Of River and Lost Lands, Impact Doc, Amsterdam. 2016 What Remains, Latvian Museum of Photography, Riga.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 Art Jameel: At the Edge of Land, 2023, Riyadh. Synesthetic Notations, Serendipity Art Festival, Goa, IN. To Enter The Sky, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka. 2021 32nd Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), Singapore. 2020Afterglow, Yokohama Triennale 2020, Yokohama, JP. Nach Uns Die Sintflut, Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna. Related Realities, Backlight Triennale, Tampere, FI. 2019 Stories of Earthly Survival, Ci.CLO Biennial, Porto, PT. 2018Temporary Certainty, 4A Centre for contemporary Asia Art, Sydney. Breaking Point, Triennial of Photography Hamburg, DE. Relics, Singapore Art Week, Singapore. 2017 Chobi Mela Photo Festival IX, Dhaka. 2016 Daegu Photo Biennale, South Korea. 2015 Photo Quai Biannual, Paris, France. 2012Noorderlicht Photo festival, Gronigen, NL.
