INDIA

Bread, Circuses & I, 2022. Mixed-media installation, variable dimensions.

'Panem et circuses refers to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to Roman citizens as well as the spectacular games and other forms of entertainment used as a strategy for prolonging the empire. Appropriating this anodyne logic to critique the neo-liberal regimes and the media economies that sustain them, Thukral & Tagra explore the potentialities of the internet as well as modes of sociality such as gaming and breaking bread together, hinting at paradigm shifts that are quietly underway. At this intersection of old and new economies, the artists offer an opportunity to rest and reconfigure the status quo through a playful contest of tongue twisting verbal Kabaddi. The contest form as well as the bread metaphor, additionally echo the recent farmers' protests in India against neo-liberalisation of the agrarian economy glimpsed at in the accompanying videos.