Mindscape In Cyberspace

Black Robert Journal is an Art and Literature Journal that defines itself by saying, “We subscribe to the notion that there is lots of vital work not being shared, from a spectrum of hills, and we intend to provide contrary voice to the mediocrity of same-same/different-different.”

In their current issue, they have published one Bangla Visual Poetry of mine, titled “Sin” (see the image below) and also an interview with me. The interview was conducted by the poet and vispo artist, Alexander Jorgensen, the Managing Editor of Black Robert Journal.

View my vispo piece here
Read my interview here

Venereal Kittens is a collective, conceptualized and edited by artist-poet Matina L. Stamatakis and dedicated to archiving and preserving innovative works by writers and artists of the 21st century, with a strong preference for experimental, avant-garde,post modern poetry and art. They say very clearly that they are not interested in mainstream writing or art.

They have already featured great artists and writers like, Alexander Jorgensen, Kane X. Faucher, Theoni Tambaki, ek rzepka, Carmen Racovitza, Ted Warnell, John Moore Williams, Angela Genusa, Javier Kronauer, Marco Giovenale, Raymond Farr, Anna Christina, Mauricette Beaussart, Drew Kunz, Nico Vassilakis, Linh Dinh, Robert Chrysler, Catherine M. Bennett, Michelle Detorie, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Mark Lamoureux, Bruna Mori, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Philip Jenks, Diana Magallon, Jeff Crouch, etc.

Recently they have added my digital paintings and visual poetry to their archive. It feels really nice to be featured on a journal with all those great artists who are shaping the art and literature of 21^st century.

Find the thumbnails of my paintings and vispos that are featured on Venereal Kittens, below:

Entangled

… and Birds and Birds

Comics

Park Street Junction

Watching TV - Emotinally Red

Take a look at my works on Venereal Kittens at following locations:
http://venerealkittens.blogspot.com/2008/10/samit-roy.html
http://venerealkittens.blogspot.com/2008/02/samit-roy-continued.html

Rampage
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Being an avid gamer I used to spend lots of time on various versions of famous game series GTA – scheming a ‘rampage’, planning ‘bomb blasts’, executing a ‘mall shootout’ or simply ‘riding’ through the city ‘killing gang members’. This image is a kind of extension of my visual memories of those virtual images of deaths and blood and blasts, juxtaposed against our real context – a blasting population, often threatened, disturbed by deaths and murders, mass killings and genocides. It’s all about our time - restless and anxious, like the central character of GTA, standing in the middle of the blood and bodies of ‘wasted gang members’.

The Bengali text on the image says, ‘Our time’, repeatedly.

This work has been featured on the cover of Autumn 2007 issue of International Journal, published by Canadian Institute of International Affair (CIIA, Toronto), currently known as Canadian International Council (CIC). Thanks to CIC and IJ.

Exodus
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Since I was a kid, I have often witnessed hundreds and thousands of homeless, uprooted people, coming out of the dark caves of poverty and hunger, crossing the borders & the fences and walking towards a darker future, with their face glowing with meaningless hope. They know that they might not reach anywhere; still they wish to continue their journey, their Exodus, for a better home, a better world. In this image, I have tried to capture, the endless, meaningless journey of homeless people, crossing borders and checkposts, hiding in the darkness of cloudy nights, and being threatened by their own transitory existence, for years.

Later, this image has been used as a supporting illustration, by Canadian Institute of International Affair (CIIA, Toronto), currently known as Canadian International Council (CIC), for the Autumn 2007 issue of their International Journal, along with few other works of mine. They have also featured my work ‘Rampage’ on the cover of this issue. Thanks to CIC and IJ.

Comics
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Since my childhood, I have always been mesmerized by the magical world of images and text of comic books and the bikini-clad girlfriends of the super heroes with their funny speech baloons, crossing the boundaries of those small boxy frames and rigid panels. I have always wanted to create a comic strip, but it did not get done. The only thing that I could do is to bring together one of my unfinished poems about a weekend trip with a rejected photograph from the same trip, and make a conscious effort to simulate the eerie ambience of the first cell of a dark, action comics strip - still without a story, waiting for a hostile moment to begin its journey through the pages of our childhood fears.

The text on the image can be roughly translated as,

There are trucks and trucks and trucks, and more trucks, more and more trucks, truck after truck, standing still beside the yellow seat, before us, and the dark sleeves of their t-shirts wipe off from the dark, gloomy, night, the vaporized sodium of Highway no. 7!