Monika Dutta
Monika Dutta is a cross media artist and award winning film maker. Her practice derives from a cross-disciplinary approach to methods and materials and embraces the disciplines of moving image and animation; photography; drawing; sculpture; constructed textiles; performance and activism, producing works which collectively map relationships between the tangible natural environment and the constructed realities of a culture driven by technology, as reflected through subtle and precarious relationships that exist between the Urban and the Rural. She is most interested in examining and finding ways to communicate the dichotomies of Rural/Urban and Behavioural change/Technological solutions, which exist within the context of environmental sustainability.
She has extensive experience of teaching and facilitation in creative disciplines across a wide range of the community and education settings and specialises in engaging hard to reach young people and vulnerable adults.
In 1998 Monika became the first Digital Artist in Residence at Isis Arts new facility in Tyneside and has exhibited and screened work on an international scale and worked collaboratively to deliver works that interrogate the role and impact of 'new media' practice. In 2005 she began to develop custom software to facilitate live animation and moving image manipulation for performance alongside sound artists and musicians, undertaking her first live audiovisual performance with sonic duo pavlov at the 404 International Festival of Electronic Arts in Rosario, Argentina, and went on to present her unique brand of live animation and performance at events including Bradford's 12squared festival, the 404 European tour in Trieste 2007 and M.A.D Art Making a Difference at London's Truman Brewery. She has an established collaborative practice with sonic performer David Mutch (formerly of pavlov), they have presented independent works at the 404 European tour in Trieste 2008, Bradford Playhouse Hatch season 2009 and work commissioned by Access Space Sheffield in 2010. In 2015 she was an awarded a residency with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and was selected for Digital Media Labs third group residency for artists using technology within their practice.
Monika works in collaborative partnership with composer and sonic artist Jake Harries; a little piece of land is a long term project which functions as a fertile ground upon which they develop ideas and formulate questions which can be mediated via a range of artistic research and production, inspired by a shared response to economic and evironmental crisis that has been developing within the market-led consumer society in which we live, and a shared understanding of the pressing need to raise questions targeted at the relationships between production and demand, in the context of the potential futures we all face. In 2016 they received Arts Council and British Council funding to present the project at Pixelache Symposium in Helsinki, Finland, and in 2019 recieved Developing Your Creative Practice funding from Arts Council England. They also work on the ongoing project element which aims to produce 118 short film vignettes, catalogued according to the Periodical Table and, in their entirety, producing a durational work to engage audiences in longer periods of viewing which simultaneously highlight and defy the 21st century attention span.
