Soumendra Bhattacharya

This collaborative project brings together five artists working in different art forms – Soumendra Bhattacharya, actor and storyteller; Sidhant Deb, singer and songwriter; Arif Ahmed, musician, composer, designer and animator; Shweta Chaudhuri, actor; and Ushnak Basu, cinematographer and photographer. Titled Sharif the project intends to explore physical and emotional isolation in the age of hyper-connectivity through technology.

The idea for this collaboration germinated when Sidhant connected with Soumendra after he had watched him doing a storytelling session on YouTube. They discussed the idea of a collaborative project where Soumendra would perform his stories along with Sidhant, and Arif, Sidhant’s friend, would design and compose the music for them. The idea for this joint venture soon expanded to include Shweta and Ushnak.

The concept for the audio-visual presentation Sharif is motivated by the difficult times we are living in currently with the physical and emotional isolation that people are experiencing, in spite of a technologically overconnected world. The concept is explored through the journey of three friends over the course of five years – 2011 to 2015 - a time when the internet had entered all areas of our lives. Through a series of montages, the viewer gets to see slices of their lives in five scenes, spread over five years with five original songs. The performances will be mostly devised, in order to capture the flavour of live performance art. Their aim is to create a democratic space where each artist brings their strength to the project to create something new challenging the status quo.

The outcome of this grant will be this audiovisual presentation. View the final outcome here.

The Grantee’s deliverables to IFA will be documentation of the process and the presentation.

This grant is made possible under the special initiative 25x25, with support from lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners, Titan Company Limited, Priya Paul, and Sethu Vaidyanathan.