Reliable Copy
Under the framework of Reliable Copy, a publishing house and research practice, Nihaal Faizal and Sarasija Subramanian produce and circulate works, projects, and writing by artists. Since 2018, they have published eight books, curated an exhibition, hosted workshops, and organized a wide range of public programming.
For them, the residency at Amant is a “first step towards our larger objective to offer a revisionist, non-occidental reading” of the now out-of-print Hanuman Book series published between 1986 and 1993 by the artist Francesco Clemente and writer Raymond Foye out of an office in the Chelsea Hotel. While in New York, they will source, catalogue, annotate and analyze documents related to and surrounding the series. Even though materially and formally, the books were in many ways a collaboration between the USA and India—with all volumes having been produced at Kalakshetra Press in Madras—they were never distributed in India. For Reliable Copy, Hanuman Books offers a way of understanding a cross-cultural venture, steeped in complex contexts, histories, and the readership it did (as well as did not) give rise to.