Man with Cockerel-2, 2004, is a visual transposition of Man with Cockerel, 2001. Geeta Kapur writes about Man with Cockerel, 2001:

“A bald man with a placid, Buddha-like face, clutching and letting go then clutching and letting go a plumed fowl: this rhythmically repeated, soft-gray image offers a tantalizing grasp of desire, an allegory on dispossession. Kaleka’s subject-matter is representational and yet, by the form and brevity of its videoed avatar, by a trick of durational fallacy, by sheer transience, it erases its signified meaning. The imaged body – at the brink of dissolution and disappearance – reads like an index of mortality. Its quotidian identity is subordinated to a fragile sense of being where no assertion, no action is necessary except that which trusts in a minimal continuum of survival. The language of representation enters the liminal zone and the encounter, sanguine, serene, evanescent, resembles a haiku where the hypothesis offered about a lived life needs no backing of proof.”*

* Excerpt from ‘Inside the Black Box: images caught in a beam’, to be published in Geeta Kapur’s forthcoming book, Ends and Means(Tulika , Delhi, 2009)

In Man with Cockerel-2, the viewer's reverie is jolted by a montage of asynchronous sounds. These struggle to attain verisimilitude, to connect with the chimeric procession of events injected into the interstices of the image. The image itself splinters into pixels of the dissolving man.
Sensory relief is offered at the end of the loop by the long silent lapping of waves on an empty screen.

VIDEOGRAPHY

CROSSINGS 2005
4 channel video projection on 190 x 250cm, (75 x 98 inches) acrylic paintings, 15 minute loop with sound

solo show
Bose Pacia Gallery
New York Sep 15 - Aug 29 2005

group shows
Hungry God - Indian Contemporary Art, Busan MOMA, Dec 22 2006 - Feb 19 2007

Arario Gallery, Beijing Sep 3 - Nov 15 2006
curator June Y. Gwak

iCon India Contemporary, Venice Biennale (collateral event) Jun 12 - Jul 31 2005
curators Peter Nagy, Julie Evans, Gordon Knox

acknowledgements
camera Abbas Muzaffar, Chico, Celia Lowenstein, Ranbir Kaleka music and song of ‘Calls’ Madan Gopal Singh
sound designer David Fulton audio engineer David Fulton editor/compositor Steffen Frech
performance Dr Ahmar Raza, Nuzhat Kazmi, Shantanu Lodh, Subba Ghosh, Jasbir Kaleka, Jagroop Kaur Kaleka,
Robbie Kaleka, Vikram Kaleka, Rishi Soni, Prashant, Aban Raza, Aman Mann, Gurnam Singh Mann, Manmeet Singh
post production services City Centre Digital Oakland, California special thanks to Deepinder Mann, Riverbank Studios, New Delhi
installation stills, video stills Arnie Bose, Carlos Martín, Enrica Cavarzan

MAN WITH COCKEREL-2 2004
Singel channel video, 6 minute loop with sound. Back projection on a screen fitted in a constructed wall, (variable).

exhibition
Resonance Golden Jubilee
Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi Aug 2005
curator K T Ravindran

acknowledgements
actor Ram Gopal Bajaj cockerel Mustapha digital compositing Riverbank Studios, New Delhi
video stills Riverbank Studios, New Delhi