Facing History and Ourselves: Revisiting Archives and Museums in the 21st Century India | December 02 & 03, 2022
India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in association with Emami Art, Kolkata
presents a two-day conference
Facing History and Ourselves*
Revisiting Archives and Museums in the 21st Century India
under the Archives and Museums programme
Friday, December 02 & Saturday, December 03, 2022
Amphitheatre, 1st Floor, Emami Art, Kolkata
777, Anandapur, EM Bypass, Kolkata – 700 107
Since the time they were established by the British in the 19th century, archives and museums in India have undergone a steady evolution. From serving to create a primitive and exotic image of India for the Raj to adapting to the sociopolitical and cultural aspirations of an emerging nation-state since 1947, these institutions have remained at the centre of debates on history, identity and culture. With time, they have become richer, numerous and, lately, glamorous sites of cultural activity and tourism. However, their symbolic value as keepers of the past continues to be somewhat static and accessible in a limited fashion. Today archives and museums operate within politically structured limits representing a myopic view of the past as a cultural and historical monolith. In the process, the fact that our societies are composed of diverse cultural impulses is undermined.
We are currently at a crucial juncture in history, marked by political tumult and social upheavals that raise questions about the roles of public institutions in general and archives and museums in particular. Some of these questions include: should archives and museums remain unaffected by the shifts in social and political climates? Should they stick to their primary mandate of documenting and preserving the past or facilitate creative endeavours that respond to the present and future? Can creative engagements with archives and museums bring forth lived histories and create space for a plurality of perspectives? How can they enable resistant forms of thinking, seeing, listening and feeling? And finally, how does all this work become accessible to the larger public?
The Archives and Museums programme at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is conceived as a response to these questions. It seeks to transform the sites of archives and museums into platforms for dialogue and discourse through creative and scholarly interventions to generate fresh critical perspectives.
This conference, presented by IFA in association with Emami Art, brings together creative practitioners, artists, curators, scholars, researchers, archivists and museum professionals to facilitate conversations about the fundamental role of archives and museums in our socially and politically fraught times.
Organised around keynote addresses and panels structured around the above questions moderated by field experts, the conference brings together 11 projects from five host institutions and Project Coordinators to articulate their experiences and challenges in reimagining archives and museums as sites of contact and departure for creating fresh narratives for a larger public.
Image: Labani Jangi/ People's Archive of Rural India
*The title of the Conference is partly taken from the Foundation Project of the same name with Subasri Krishnan, implemented by IFA under the Archives and Museum programme in collaboration with People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).
Register here to attend the conference.
Day 1: Friday, December 02, 2022 | 09:30 AM to 07:30 PM
09:30 AM to 10:00 AM | Registration
10:00 AM to 10:10 AM | Introduction and Opening Remarks
Arundhati Ghosh (Executive Director, IFA), Ushmita Sahu (Director and Head Curator, Emami Art) and Ritwika Misra (Programme Officer: Archives and Museums programme, IFA)
10:10 AM to 11:00 AM | Opening Keynote Address
Indira Chowdhury (Scholar-in-Residence, Centre for Public History, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru)
11:00 AM to 11:30 AM | Tea Break
11:30 AM to 01:30 PM | Panel I: Retelling from Absences
Historically recognised as institutions with the power to define and confine knowledge, archives and museums are also keepers of peoples’ histories and play an important role in safeguarding cultures as well as crafting numerous identities. At the same time, they carry the burden of being exclusionary by prioritising dominant cultures and histories and erasing marginal communities from social memory. This panel brings together four projects that highlight how engagements with archives and museums could facilitate restoration of marginalised narratives and help retell inclusive and diverse stories.
Panellists:
- Keshav Waghmare (Writer, researcher and Executive Editor of Anvikshan, a Marathi quarterly magazine)
- Subasri Krishnan (Filmmaker, Head of Media Lab, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore)
- Arjun Motwani (Doctoral candidate, Department of English, Jadavpur University)
- Mario D’ Souza (Curator, critic, journalist and researcher)
Moderator: Latika Gupta (Curator, researcher and writer)
01:30 PM to 02:30 PM | Break
02:30 PM to 04:30 PM | Panel II: Rethinking Public History
Building on the idea of inclusivity and diversity deliberated upon in the first panel, this session brings together four projects that weigh the possibilities of rethinking history writing based on the understanding of materials from archives and museums, and the lived experiences of people. These parallel and alternative histories will enable new ways of seeing the past in all its diversity, as well as rethink our relationship to it. The panel will explore how linkages between lived histories and institutions also tell us about the advent and evolution of different cultures in various contexts.
- Ammel Sharon (Doctoral candidate, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
- Aishwarya Amar Kirit (Writer, museologist and archivist)
- Madhuja Mukherjee (Artist, and Professor, Film Studies, Jadavpur University)
- Nobina Gupta (Director, Disappearing Dialogues)
Moderator: Partho Datta (Historian, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
04:30 PM to 06:00 PM | Tea Break
06:00 PM to 07:30 PM | Performance: The Aahvaan Project
Founded in 2016, The Aahvaan Project is based on the Nirguna philosophy of love and the works of Sufi saints such as Kabir, Lal Ded and Lalon Fakir. Through a unique combination of storytelling and music, Aahvaan aims to create spaces for dialogues around the relevance of love in today's times. Their work is heavily dependent on oral traditions, archival materials, and conversations. To explore this philosophy, the Project travels and talks to diverse people from lived, literature or musical experiences. They also conduct workshops based on folk music and storytelling, and performances big and small.
- Vedi Sinha (Writer, storyteller, vocalist and performer)
- Sumant Balakrishnan (Guitarist, vocalist and songwriter)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 2: Saturday, December 03, 2022 | 10:30 AM to 06:00 PM
10:30 AM to 11:00 AM | Registration
11:00 AM to 11:30 AM | Tea Break
11:30 AM to 01:30 PM | Panel III: Reimagining Access and Outreach
Archives and museums have a commitment not only to collect and preserve materials from the past but also make them publicly accessible. The advent of digital and audiovisual tools has added to democratisation of audiences and transformed the idea of the privileged museum-goer into a vast pool of virtual audiences who were earlier uninitiated and unexposed to such viewing. However, while digital technologies have made new ways for museum and archival collections to be ubiquitous and exist in non-traditional forms, they have also posed the risk of taking away from the online viewer the experience of physically witnessing the objects. This panel will highlight how creative use of audiovisual media can lead to engagements enabling newer interactions and forging relationships with unconventional audiences.
- Meera Krishnamurthy (Animation filmmaker)
- Kevin Fernandes (Assistant Professor of English, Indian Institute of Psychology and Research, Bengaluru)
- Akash Srinivas (Prehistoric archaeologist, postdoctoral research fellow at Ashoka University)
Moderator: Shaleen Wadhwana (Curator, writer)
01:30 PM to 02:30 PM | Break
02:30 PM to 04:30 PM | Panel IV: Museums and Archives: Renewed Entry Points
The last session brings together the heads of archives and museums that IFA has collaborated with in the last two years to reflect on what archives and museums mean in 21st century India. The panel will discuss the challenges each institution faces in programming, staffing, funding, outreach, and operating while considering their role in enabling the spirit of curiosity, supporting the seeking of knowledge and developing a sense of criticality among citizens.
Panellists:
- Namita Waikar (Co-founder of and Managing Editor at the People’s Archive of Rural India)
- Radhika Hegde (Curator, SL Bhatia History of Medicine Museum, Library & Archives)
- Natasha Fernandes (Curator, Museum of Christian Art, Goa)
- Jayanta Sengupta (Director, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata)
Moderator: Anant Maringanti (Director, Hyderabad Urban Lab Foundation)
04:30 PM to 05:00 PM | Tea Break
05:00 PM to 05:40 PM | Closing Keynote Address
Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Artist and curator, Raqs Media Collective)
05:40 PM to 06:00 PM | Valedictory Session
Arundhati Ghosh (Executive Director, IFA), Ushmita Sahu (Director and Head Curator, Emami Art) and Ritwika Misra (Programme Officer: Archives and Museums programme, IFA)
You can download/view the concept note, conference schedule and detailed bios of institutions and speakers of Facing History and Ourselves: Revisiting Archives and Museums in the 21st Century India.
The conference is free and open to all and will have Indian Sign Language Interpretation.
For all conference related queries and information, please write to contactus@indiaifa.org
The conference is made possible with support from Titan Company Limited, Kshirsagar Apte Foundation and Parijat Foundation.
The Archives and Museums programme in 2020-21 and 2021-22 was part-supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and Parijat Foundation.