2014

Shubhasree Bhattacharya talks about her experiences of engaging with and archiving performative forms of work music from Bengal. In addition to talking about work songs, Shubhasree shares moments from soundscape projects and documentary films she has been a part of. 

 

Ruchira talks about her journey in the arts which will also cover her homeschooling experiences. She will share her experiences of engaging with her children in artistic activities, which lead to the launch of ‘Think Arts’ to extend these experiences to other children, and speak about her latest project which invites children to create an installation of their own.

 

Amit Reddy, biker and author of Who Stole My India? - Revelations, Humiliations, and Hallucinations on Two Wheels, talks about his numerous travels and experiences, and reads passages from his book about his solo motorcycle journey of 40,000 kilometres.

 

IFA screens the film of grantee Anushka Meenakshi, My Name is Basheer. The film traces the journey of a Chennai-based theatre collective in creating two plays inspired by the life and stories of Malayalam writer Vaikom Muhammad Basheer. The film was followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

 

An evening of music by Not A Number - Nafisa Crishna, Ashwin Aryan, and IFA's own Neelima Prasanna Aryan constitute this multilingual band. Not A Number performs covers of their favourite Hindi, English, and Tamizh songs and while their own creations are very nascent in form, they look to develop them into songs they love to listen to, and songs they want to sing.

 

Konnakkol and mridangam artist B R Somashekar Jois talks about the Konnakkol and the history of the oral percussion art, describing its evolution in Carnatic music and its use in films. He will play audio recordings as part of his talk and give a short performance. This was followed by an interactive session with the audience.

 

IFA screens the film Sthaniya Sambaad (Spring in the Colony) directed by Moinak Biswas & Arjun Gourisaria. Sthaniya Sambaad is a film on Calcutta that constantly juggles the real and the hallucinatory, serious observations and wry humour, and familiarity with unexplored spaces of human existence.

 

Author Sudipto Das reads from his book The Ekkos Clan, unravelling the mystery behind the protagonists’ search for the killers of his family, his own roots, and the perilous secrets hidden in his grandmother, Kubha’s, stories.

 

Professor A G Rao presents on his work with artisans across the country, and his workshops in collaboration with local organisations in many cities, to introduce children to some fundamental concepts in design. Professor Rao has been teaching at the Industrial Design Center (IDC) of IIT Bombay for nearly 40 years, and runs a unique project called the Bamboo Studio at IDC that studies bamboo as a medium of design.

 

IFA screens two twenty minute episodes of DesiSec by Laird Brown and Purba Sarkar, a documentary film project on cyber-security in India, as part of a series developed by the Centre for Internet and Security in Bangalore. The screening was followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

 

Anjana Kothamachu talks to the audience about her artistic journey— beginning from her time as a student of Psychology, to her experiments with various mediums and forms of drawing, sculpture and video. Kothamachu’s work was a part of the India Art Fair 2014, where she installed a large-scale outdoor sculpture titled Agalma.

 

Vikram Sridhar takes the age old oral medium in a contemporary form to new age listeners in a storytelling session at IFA. He is a storyteller who believes in its potential as a strong medium for conservation, and a theatre practitioner who has been in the English theatre space for about seven years.