Screening of works by Karthik Pandian and a discussion with Pandian and Mike Forcia. Free and open to all. Reserve tickets via Eventbrite.
Join us for a screening of new films by Pandian from within the larger Forsythia cycle, followed by a conversation between the artist and Mike Forcia. Forcia (Bad River Anishinaabe) is an American Indian Movement activist who lives in Minneapolis, MN, and collaborated closely with Pandian. Forcia describes having “hollow bones” as an Anishinaabe spiritual practice rooted in becoming a moral and unselfish vessel within one’s community.
“Hi, can I join you?” “It depends what your intentions are.” Karthik Pandian’s மனசு (manasu) offers a sprawling, riverine account of relationship-building and bridging distance. The film restages the artist’s first meeting with American Indian Movement activist Mike Forcia at an encampment for unhoused Native people in Minneapolis, MN in 2021. Using re-enactment and outtakes to recount that fateful encounter, the film chronicles the pair’s subsequent collaborations which encompass the larger Forsythia cycle: public performance, music, ceremony, and art-making.
In Pandian’s ancestral South Indian language of Tamil, மனசு (manasu) means both “heart” and “mind.” The film seeks to repair this connection sundered by the English language, Enlightenment, and colonialism, alighting along the way on additional couplings: murky translations, confluences of rivers, and kinship found in shared “Indian-ness” across Turtle Island and South Asia, to offer ways of working together in difference. Through மனசு (manasu), difference can be seen as a source of strength with the potential to animate movements—here seen through the laughter, discomfort, and earnest connection necessary to truly move together.
Pandian’s Forsythia cycle is a multifaceted project which originated the in 2020 uprising in Minneapolis, and activists’ toppling of that city’s monument to Christopher Columbus. The project is rooted in long-term collaboration to address colonization, translation, responsibility, and accountability. Encompassing film, performance, and installation, the Forsythia cycle foregrounds the relations necessary to imagine a survivable future, and ways of creating culture in exile, diasporic, and settler colonial contexts.
Accessibility: Innis Town Hall is a physically accessible venue. There are four dedicated spaces for assistive mobility devices at the rear of Town Hall, and the theatre has power-assisted doors. Assistive-listening devices are also available. An accessible gender-neutral washroom is located next to the café.
Presented in partnership with the Centre for South Asian Critical Humanities at UTM and the Cinema Studies Institute. With the support of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Mike Forcia (Bad River Anishinaabe) is an American Indian Movement activist and collaborator with Karthik Pandian on the Forsythia cycle. Forcia lives in Minneapolis, MN.
Karthik Pandian is an artist working to unsettle colonial time. He uses film, sculpture, drawing, and performance to find openings into collective liberation. Supported by a 2022 Creative Capital Award and a 2024 MacDowell Fellowship, Karthik is currently at work on his debut feature film, Lucid Decapitation. The film is a collaboration with Mike Forcia (Bad River Anishinaabe), the American Indian Movement activist who orchestrated the takedown of the Columbus monument at the Minnesota State Capitol in June of 2020. Karthik has presented his work internationally at exhibition venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer, and the Palais de Tokyo and on digital platforms such as the Criterion Channel and Triple Canopy. He is a professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and a guide, certified in offering Lama Rod Owens’ Seven Homecomings practice.