IFA@Kolkata | Facing History and Ourselves: A Two-Day Conference | Emami Art, Kolkata | December 02-03, 2022

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in association with Emami Art
presents
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, First Floor, Emami Art

777, Anandapur, EM Bypass, Kolkata – 700 107

We are delighted to invite you to the two-day conference, Facing History and Ourselves: Revisiting Archives and Museums in the 21st Century India, at Emami Art, Kolkata. It brings together 11 projects implemented by IFA across five archives and museums in India and their coordinators to talk about their experiences of engaging with the collections of these institutions and reimagining them as sites of creative engagements, knowledge production and dissemination. The conference is organised as part of the Archives and Museums programme at IFA that seeks to transform archives and museums into active platforms for dialogue and discourse through creative and scholarly interventions to generate fresh perspectives about history, society and culture.

Organised around keynote addresses and panel discussions moderated by field experts, the panels devised around four key themes - Retelling from AbsencesRethinking Public HistoryReimagining Access and Outreach and Museums and Archives: Renewed Entry Points - will facilitate conversations about the purpose of archives and museums in the fraught times of the present. The conference also includes a musical performance by The Aahvaan Project, based on the works of Sufi saints, oral traditions and archival materials.

Register here to attend the conference.

Conference Schedule

Day 1 | Friday, December 02, 2022

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) | 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
Keshav Waghmare | Subasri Krishnan | Mario D’Souza | Arjun Motwani
Moderator: Latika Gupta

01:30 PM to 02:30 PM | Break

02:30 PM to 04:30 PM | Panel II: Rethinking Public History
Ammel Sharon | Aishwarya Amar Kirit | Madhuja Mukherjee | Nobina Gupta
Moderator: Partho Datta

04:30 PM to 06:00 PM | Tea Break

06:00 PM to 07:30 PM | Performance: The Aahvaan Project 
Based on the Nirguna philosophy of love and the works of Sufi saints, the performance draws on oral traditions, archival materials, and conversations and showcases them through storytelling and music.
Vedi Sinha | Sumant Balakrishnan

Day 2 | Saturday, December 03, 2022

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
Meera Krishnamurthy | Akash Srinivas | Kevin Fernandes
Moderator: Shaleen Wadhwana

01:30 PM to 02:30 PM | Break

02:30 PM to 04:30 PM | Panel IV: Museums and Archives: Renewed Entry Points
Namita Waikar | Radhika Hegde | Natasha Fernandes | Jayanta Sengupta
Moderator: Anant Maringanti

04:30 PM to 05:00 PM | Tea Break

05:00 PM to 05:50 PM | Closing Keynote Address
Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Artist and curator, Raqs Media Collective)

05:50 PM to 06:00 PM | Valedictory Session
Arundhati GhoshUshmita SahuRitwika Misra

You can download/view the concept noteconference 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 more information and queries regarding the conference, please write to contactus@indiaifa.org

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).

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.