Cross Currents | Play as Practice #2 | City as Playground | A conversation with Vaibhav Dutt, Sumona Chakravarty, Nilanjan Das and Sumana Chandrashekar | February 17, 2021 | 06:00 PM

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)
invites you to
City as Playground
A conversation with Vaibhav Dutt, Sumona Chakravarty, Nilanjan Das and Sumana Chandrashekar (moderator)

Wednesday, February 17, 2021 | 06:00 PM | Zoom

organised as part of
Cross Currents: A Series of Curated Conversations

(The Theme for January 2021 – March 2021: Play as Practice)

Click here to register for the session on zoom. 

We are delighted to invite you to another session organised as part of Cross Currents, which is A Series of Curated Conversations on specific themes with a diverse group of artists, scholars, experts, and policymakers. The theme for January 2021 to March 2021 is Play as Practice.

The second session titled City as Playground with Vaibhav Dutt, Sumona Chakravarty, Nilanjan Das and Sumana Chandrashekar (moderator) will explore how artists use play as a means to address cities’ systemic problems. Cities today move through phases of rapid transformation. Physical infrastructure, sounds, smells and ecology change everyday thereby impacting relationships and notions of work, play and leisure. In this context, the conversation will address how artists respond to these transforming cityscapes and negotiate these spaces to create opportunities for artistic play and creative expression.

Vaibhav Dutt’s work lies at the intersection of law and data analysis. He has expertise in designing and implementing tools for urban planning and governance, with a focus on participatory planning. Vaibhav has previously worked on projects to address violations of civil liberties such as custodial torture and death penalty. His research interests include law, human rights, and urban infrastructure.

Vaibhav is associated with Fields of View. They received a grant from IFA, under the Project 560 programme in 2018, for a Year-long Curated Series of Artistic Engagements in Bangalore. Read about the project here.

Sumona Chakravarty is the founder of Hamdasti, a Kolkata-based arts platform for socially engaged arts practices. Her work is participatory in nature, engaging diverse communities over a long period of time and collaboratively intervening in public spaces. Sumona has been a Fellow in the ArtThink South Asia Program at Khoj, Delhi and at the Global Cultural Leaders Program, hosted by the European Union. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Ghare Baire, DAG Museums at the Currency Building, Kolkata.

Sumona received two grants from IFA, under the Arts Practice programme in 2014 and 2017. Read about the projects here and here.

Nilanjan Das is a printmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in Kolkata. He is interested in gender interaction and intimacy in the public domain. His interest in public space instigated him to work with various mediums, from interactive public art projects to traditional printmaking mediums, especially with screen print or serigraphy, which he both applied for his studio practice and print in the public domain.

Sumana Chandrashekar is Programme Lead at IFA. She spearheads the Bangalore city focused Project 560 and holds joint responsibility for the Arts Practice programme at IFA.

Click here to register for the session on zoom. The session will also be streamed live on our facebook page - no prior registration required to join the live streaming.

Read more about Cross Currents: A Series of Curated Conversations here and the theme for January 2021 – March 2021 titled Play as Practice here.