Being Singular Plural is an artistic expression of Jean-Luc Nancy’s seminal work of the same name, Being Singular Plural. The exhibition was first presented in June 2010 in Deutsche Guggenheim, as “the first [to focus] exclusively on artistic production in India.” Building from Nancy’s philosophy of singularity, plurality, subject, and object, this collection of video and sound instillations questions the conventional ideas of being.
In the New York Catalog for Being Singular Plural Sandhini Poddar, Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, underlines some of the exhibits inspirations, aspirations, and developments through her essay No Ordinary Darkness; and in doing so she highlights the layers of “space” that it occupies:
… the exhibition Being Singular Plural is itself oriented toward context and contingency, emphasizing the coproduction of new work, facilitating research, and assembling a community among its practitioners. It remains a resolutely heterogeneous and ultimately unresolved entity, presented first in Berlin and now in New York as an exhibition-in-progress. Being Singular Plural turns the institution into an agent of collaboration and space for conversation (Poddar, 16).
As an exhibition-in-progress, Being Singular Plural, features the conventions of space and being in three different ways: curation, (although there have been two curations of the exhibit, the only one being addressed here will be the current exhibition at the New York Guggenheim), content, and representation. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition of Being Singular Plural is a very large collection that extends from the museum itself to its exteriors, with additional featured video presentations within its theaters as well. The exhibition pieces are primarily housed in the museum’s annexes. The collection literally occupies a large space at the museum; furthermore each “space” acts as both singularly plural and plurally singular.
Nancy’s concept of “being” as existence in relation, or correlation of, is literally explored throughout the curation spaces. Annex 7, at the very top of the concentric circles of the Museum, houses Kabir Mohanty’s Song for an Ancient Land (2003-12), and his collaborative work with Vikram Joglekar, In Memory (2009-12). Song for an Ancient Land is an ever-evolving video instillation. Its first iterations were much shorter, but the current format in exhibition is a four-hour exploration of the relationship of sound and the other senses. The video is screened within a sound enclosed environment. The affect of the cave is not only informative of the video, but also informative of the other spaces.
In Memory, adjacent to the former sound environment, is another audio instillation comprised of two major elements: a Foley pit of “beach sand, shells, peacock stones marble chips, dried leaves, twigs, and grass;” and pre-recorded sounds (Poddar, 21). The whole space is both interactive and inactive. The pit engages with multiple sensory perceptions both singularly and in co-relation. As one enters the designated area, they engage with the visual representation of the area and the pit as an areal space. Unlike other exhibits this one is meant to be touched, and thus the prerecorded sounds are activated with physical engagement. Each interaction with the pit transforms experience from a plurally singular to a singularly plural. Mohanty and Joglekar’s pieces challenge the parameters of interconnectedness, by resetting them within sense spaces. Whether you exit through the stairs or around the rotunda the experience of the soundscape is practically made clearer by the usual museum chatter making Nancy’s ideology ever more evident.
The exhibition continues in Annex 5 with the Creative Machine Collective’s (Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya) Residue (2011) and Nishan (2007-). Residue is a looped forty-minute film through which the connectedness of the machine and nature are explored (there is a very obvious visual engagement with Gilles Deleuze made within the framework of the film). The film is shot in 35mm on Fugi Film, highlighting the grains and colors of the abandoned factory and its natural habitat; the sound is amplified by the vast silence and the layers of chanting. The meditativeness of the film highlights the human relationship between/to nature and machine. Residue, thus, links the singular being. 
Nishan is a work in progress. What you do get to see is a four-channel panoramic video instillation that layers upon itself uncanny distortions. The installed sound domes relay sounds of the city and interviews of its inhabitants. The incompleteness of Nishan is present in the confused expressions of its audience; it nonetheless carries the same framework of the uncanny relationship of the plural being, in juxtaposition to the singular.
Annex 2 houses another of the primary curatorial pieces of Being Singular Plural. The Torn First Pages (2004-08), by Amar Kanwar, is a “nineteen channel video instillation” (Poddar, 22). 
The nineteen channels are projected onto paper and framed by their relation to each other, more so, than by the metal framing that informs their affect. Kanwar’s piece highlights a temporality within the framework. There is a small reading area present adjacent to the instillation, a collection of print focusing on the Burmese issues being presented within the new visual narrative being projected. The reading area directly juxtaposes space and time to the content and context of the instillation. While the nineteen channels display an urgency in visual narration, the immediacy, temporality, and space frame another reality. The entirety of exhibition is framed in a similar paradox of singularity and plurality, at once as a collection but also as singular pieces. The three tiers reviewed here create a system of understanding the relationship of the audio-visual as much as they are about the content they present: Annex 2 engages the visual narrative through contemporary history, Annex 7 forces one to recognize the auditory narrative, and Annex 5 pairs them together through uniquely meditative methods through two ideologies.
The overall collection is too large to see in one go, certain videos in and of themselves take half the visiting hours, however it is possible to ascertain the philosophy of the exhibition from these few artists. The content of the pieces represent the inherent co-relational quality that Nancy aims to address. Sandhini Poddar’s curation, at the New York Guggenheim builds upon that idea, by placing each single artwork in relation to the collective. For example, although not addressed here, the exhibition on the exterior of the museum, Trespassers Will (Not) Be Prosecuted (2012) by the Desire Machine Collective, literally stands on the outside of the exhibit while literally connecting to its centerfold. If Annex 5 is understood as the centerfold, then Annex 2 can be understood as the groundwork for examining relationships of being and Annex 7 as an open space for a new conversation. As much as each adjacent piece is connected in theoretical approach and practice they are interrelated in framework and design. Each part of Being Singular Plural is best understood through its content and furthermore as a relationship to the other parts of its whole(s). “What is it that is shared or common in a community of being? Here lies Nancy’s statement: being is in common, without ever being common or having common substance” (Heikkila, 133). This exhibition-in-progress is always being as sensory engagement, always singular in co-relation, and always plural in relation to. The representation and the spaces change but the framework remains ever constant.