Santasil is a visual artist and researcher pursuing his PhD in Media Studies. His research interests broadly concern the political aesthetics of documentary media in dialogue with historiographies of violence from South Asia. As a lens-based practitioner, he experiments with formal and technical language to think alongside the material-affective properties of visuals. He imagines evolving his practice over perpetual conversations with the impossibly percipient and self-exhaustive methodology of Mr. Palomar, the eponymous protagonist of Italo Calvino's novel.
His film Farrago (2019) was programmed at the 22nd VideoEx Festival (Zurich) and the YOUKI International Youth Media Festival (Wels, Austria), among others.
Research Assistant, FIMS 2022-2023 (Coordinator: Prof. Jacquelyn Burkell)
Panels and Presentations
"Seeing/Surmising/Surviving: The Decolonial Routes of the Midnight Traveler" at Fragmentation: 2024 Annual Graduate Conference, Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto, February 2-3, 2024.
Panel Chair: "Materiality and Memory in the Digital Age" with Alexandre Gouin, Nicholas Andueza, and Lucas Murari, Reframing the Archive: International Symposium of Photography and Visual Culture (4th edition), ARCHIVO Research Network, September 22-23, 2023.
"Vultures Can Speak: Photographs of the 1946 Communal Riots in Calcutta," Other Histories of Photography (Art History Symposium XI), Universidad de los Andes, September 7-8, 2023.
"Protest Visualities: Toward a Transformative Politics of On-Site Recordings," Canadian Communication Association (CCA), Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, May 30, 2023.
"Itinerant Maps: Partition Postmemory in Sindhusthan," At Land and Sea: Topographical Imagination and the Moving Image, Istanbul Bilgi University, May 5-6, 2023.
Panel Chair: "Playful Temporalities: Multi-dynamic relations of space, time, and image" with Josue B.G. Guerro, Anton Lee and Sara Damiani, Reframing the Archive: International Symposium of Photography and Visual Culture (3rd edition). November 19, 2022.
"Performance of Spirituality: Photographs of Sri Ramakrishna and Late-19th Century Forms of Religious Power," Photographic Practices and the Making of Religion, Leipzig University, November 25-26, 2022.
"Politics of Transnationalism in Indian Experimental Ethnographic Film Practice," Camera Stylo 4 Conference, Literature and Cinema Network, Sydney University, July 16, 2021.
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2022-present: PhD Western University
Media Studies
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2019-2021: M.Phil. Jawaharlal Nehru University
English Literature
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2017-2019: M.A Jawaharlal Nehru University
English Literature
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2014-2017: B.A Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Calcutta University
English Literature
Artistic Director, Sphere Festival (2019-present)
Research Associate, Archivo Research Network (2022)
Media and Communications, Hope Kolkata Foundation (2021)
Peer-Reviewed
Mallik, Santasil. "G.I Photos of Calcutta: Toward a Vernacular Understanding of War," Trans Asia Photography, 2023, Vol. 13, No. 1.
Mallik, Santasil. "The Personal and the Fictional: Aesthetic Mediation in the Indian Documentary," Studies in South Asian Film and Media, 2023, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 43-56.
Mallik, Santasil. "Time, Trauma, and Photography: 'Where the Birds Never Sing,' but Images tend to," Archivo Papers Journal, 2022, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.24-49.
Mallik, Santasil. "Diplomacy, War, and the Ordinary: Looking Back at the Bangladesh Liberation War," Membrana: Journal of Photography, Theory, and Visual Culture, 2021, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 87-102.
Mallik, Santasil. "The Anxious Photographer: Ethics and Emotions in Photographic Encounters," Revelar: Journal of Photography and Image Studies, 2021, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 27-56.
