For the creation of an archive of lost traditions and rituals, through a mapping of the history and culture of Sulthanpet village. This project will be undertaken, in collaboration with Bakul Jani, with the children of the Government Primary School, Sulthanpet village, near Nandi Halli, Chikkaballapura.
For a series of comic strips and a calendar of community food recipes, using culinary practices that find their way into songs and stories. This project will be undertaken with children from the seventh standard, at the Government Primary School, Ramalingapura, Bukkapatna, Shira, Tumkur District.
For the construction of a data visualisation prototype to expose and make readable the information that is layered in text based data in Prof Jyoti Bhatt’s photographs and other associated materials, from his series Living Traditions that forms part of the Asia Art Archive. For nearly four decades Prof Bhatt has been documenting various ‘living traditions’, the arts, crafts and daily lives of people across the country. This project will draw on Prof Bhatt’s photographs, notes, sketchbooks, diaries, audio interviews and articles.
For working with the cultural history archive at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC) which contains a wide variety of visual materials from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal that includes books, journals, popular paintings, prints, posters, hoardings, advertisements and commercial art productions. Sujaan will trace the two-century-old history of tourism in Calcutta and focus on the ways in which the city has been represented by and for the ‘outsider’. The outcome could take various forms such as a curated guided tour, a guidebook, and a digital map that represents the different histories of Calcutta’s heritage.
For working with the cultural history archive at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC) which contains a wide variety of visual materials from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal that includes books, journals, popular paintings, prints, posters, hoardings, advertisements and commercial art productions. Vishwajyoti will visually reinterpret some of the moral science textbooks from nineteenth-century India with the visuals and popular iconography of that era to form a new body of work.
For working with the cultural history archive at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC) which contains a wide variety of visual materials from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal that includes books, journals, popular paintings, prints, posters, hoardings, advertisements and commercial art productions. Afrah’s research will culminate in a series of short videos that will portray stories of resistance of women in the nineteenth century, loosely themed around ‘Women and Impudence/Cheeky Girls’.
For the creation of a theatrical production that explores the position of women, roles of women characters and streevesha (female impersonation) within the male-dominated practice of Yakshagana. Drawing from research and personal experience, the performance imagines a reversal of roles in the popular Yakshagana plot of Draupadi Vastrapaharana, thereby exploring the conflicts around tradition, gender, power and morality inherent in the form. The performance is scheduled to premiere in Udupi in November 2015.
For a series of workshop processes conducted by a theatre group to explore and create a methodology of physical alphabets for theatre. The workshops will experiment with nonverbal explorations of textual themes and integrate them in the process of theatre-making. The outcome will be a detailed documentation of the processes that includes everyday rehearsal notes, photographs and audio-visual material.
For a series of workshops with the multiethnic communities of the eastern Himalayan regions of Sikkim and northern parts of West Bengal. It is a collaborative and multidisciplinary project that involves local music, myths and traditions dealt with in a manner that pushes the artistic boundaries of cinema. Described as an ‘interdependent cinema project’, the workshops will lead to a film, a graphic novel, a music album and finally a documentary installation exhibition.
For working with students at the Kuvempu Centenary Government Higher Primary School in Chikkaballapur District to create a local integrated workbook on language and mathematics drawing from the children’s everyday life experiences.
For a series of workshops culminating in a two-day public art festival in the Chitpur locality of old Kolkata. These workshops are designed to re-energise and activate this locality which has a rich history and heritage, through various cultural activities, innovative audience engagement and archiving with the help of local residents, businessmen, artists, craftsmen, teachers and students. Outcomes of the project will include a website, an exhibition and a DVD documenting the process.
For research into the field recordings, texts and photographs of the Dutch ethnomusicologist Arnold Bake, during his time in Bengal from 1925 to 1934. Based on this archival material gathered from various archives in India and abroad, she will construct histories of music and portraits of people and places, thus adding to and energising the existing archive for folk music, 'The Travelling Archive'. The outcomes will be an exhibition and a book.
For engaging with the Decorative Arts Department of the National Museum, New Delhi for re-staging their collection of brocade saris to make the museum a dynamic space for both research and practice. Suchitra and Abeer’s project aims to ascertain the pedagogic and public value of our national cultural resources through research and exhibition, thus establishing a live link between the collection, the classroom and the exhibition that will be curated at the National Museum in February 2016.
