Collaborating since 2004 as Desire Machine Collective, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya employ film, video, photography, and multimedia installation in their works. Assuming their name and theoretical disposition from Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, a seminal text from 1972 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, Desire Machine Collective seeks to disrupt the neurotic symptoms that arise from constricting capitalist structures with healthier, schizophrenic cultural flows of desire and information. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault put it in his preface to the text, “Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to a Non-Fascist Life.” Drawing on the ideas in this work, Jain and Madhukaillya confront the many forms of fascism that lead to violence and injustice through their practice, both regionally in Guwahati, Assam, and around the world. Jain is a fine arts graduate from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara, Gujarat, India. She subsequently served as a faculty member in Communication Design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. Madhukaillya received a degree in physics from Fergusson College in Pune, India, and completed his postgraduate work in film and video at the National Institute of Design. As Desire Machine Collective, they initiated Periferry (2007–), an alternative artist-led space and residency programs situated on the M. V. Chandardinga, a ferry docked on the Brahmaputra River in Guwahati. Periferry serves as a laboratory in flux for generating innovative practices in contemporary film and video. The space and its activities also provide a connective platform for dialogue across artistic, scientific, technological, and ecological modes of production and knowledge. As an extension of Periferry, in 2011 the artists introduced A+type, an artist residency program situated in the city of Guwahati itself. In addition to their tireless activities forging artistic networks and spaces, Desire Machine Collective have presented their work in a number of group exhibitions including, Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, India Pavilion, Venice (2011); Indian Highway IV, MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon and Indian Highway V, MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome (2011); Between Utopia and Dystopia, Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico (2011); Machines, Oi Futuro media center, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2011); Biennial of Curitiba, Brazil (2011); Being Singular Plural, Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin (2010); and Subjective Projections, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefelder (2010). “Unreal Asia”, as a part of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany (2009) Their recent exhibitions are, Being Singular Plural, at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum New York (2012), Intense Proximity, the 3rd edition of the La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, curated by Okwui Enwezor (2012) and Experimenta India: London Indian Film Festival at the Tate Modern London (2012). Walking Drifting Dragging, New Museum, (January, 2013), [UN]NATURAL LIMITS at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (January, 2013)

Sonal Jain

b. Shillong, India; lives and works in India

Mriganka Madhukaillya

b. Jorhat, Assam, India; lives and works in India

More info: http://desiremachinecollective.in/