For a series of children’s workshops that imaginatively explore the patua folklore and its social and cultural environment towards the creation of children’s theatre performances. Situated primarily in two patua villages, Nayagram and Pingla in West Bengal, the project will focus on the children of the patua community offering them opportunities to reinvigorate the now dormant performative element of the Patachitra tradition.
For a film and web platform on the journey of Warkaris, the Vaishnavite pilgrims who undertake an annual expedition to Pandharpur in Maharashtra. The filmmaker seeks to document the journey and map it on a web platform, while simultaneously linking various points enroute to textual material describing the journey. This project wishes to traverse the boundary between cinema and web technology where every viewer will have a different narrative experience of the journey depending on the choices they make.
For research towards a stylised documentary on Hindi pulp fiction that reflects the struggles of the writers and publishers as producers of ‘low art’. It will trace the journey of the writer through the system that enables the publishing and distribution of pulp fiction, thereby illustrating the ethos of the world that produces such material. This project is co-funded by Recyclewala Films Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai.
For research towards a monograph length essay on Sang-Ragini, a signature theatre tradition of Haryana, which combines theatre, ballad singing, music and dance. Studying the linkages between the music industry hubs of Delhi and Haryana, the research will map the construction of this form over time, and document the processes by which they are produced, distributed, marketed and consumed in both live and recorded formats.
For research into the popular subculture of automatons displayed during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai. His research will lead to the production of a film exploring the mythologies around these religious displays. The film will highlight the working of the low-tech automaton industry, while allowing for a creative and fictitious depiction of the research material in the form of a film. The collected material will also result in an installation piece.
For the study and documentation of landmark art exhibitions in India from 1947 to the present. It will include those exhibitions that were planned but did not materialise, thereby attempting to create a framework by which to address and analyse how exhibitions typify attitudes, thoughts and articulations on contemporary art.
For critical reflection on the relationships between theatre, history and society through the study of modes of production and consumption of nataks in Maharashtra in the early colonial period.
For research, documentation and a workshop with a group of young Warli artists to study the impacts of various influences including Christianisation on their work, thereby tracing the developments of Warli art in the present context. The project seeks to critique existing frameworks and explore new ways to write about and curate tribal art in India.
For research into the history and development of the 200-year-old Doddata performance tradition in Karnataka by tracing how it changed in response to influences from the Parsi theatre and subsequently, the Company theatre traditions.
For research into the construction of the genre of science fiction in Hindi by shedding light on how writers have used their own understanding of both science and the potential of science to perceive, comment on and reinvent their past, present and the future. It will also look at how productions, articulations and manifestations of science fiction influence aural and visual cultures in India.
For a book-making project tentatively titled ‘Bangalore Photo City: Lost and Found’, which reconstructs a ‘found’ history of 1960s-80s Bangalore drawing upon 2,00,000 photo negatives salvaged from a scrap yard. The negatives will also be digitized and hosted on a suitable server to make them publicly accessible for future research or artistic work.
For a ceramic artist’s experimentation with different clay bodies and firing techniques to make a large-scale ceramic installation, consisting of individual units of varying shapes and sizes, to be exhibited during the India Art Fair in 2015.
For research towards and the making of a series of animations that will explore movement in drawing, in a site-specific context. The final outcome will be animations that make visible facets of everyday experiences in Delhi, as recreated through memory and drawing, and developed and exhibited as in-process work in the Nehru Place market.
For a part-documentary part-fiction film on the Bengali writer Nabarun Bhattacharya’s life and work which will explore his creative and psychological processes. The film will experiment with the ‘fantastic’ in an attempt to push the bounds of cinematic art and of current practices in the documentary and fiction film modes. The film will be disseminated through international television channels, film festivals, the internet and other non-mainstream avenues.
For a two-day colloquium titled ‘Locating Art Histories: Dialogues on Language, Writing, and Research in India’ organised by the Asia Art Archive (AAA) in New Delhi. The colloquium builds upon the Bibliography project AAA has been doing for the last three years, and will engage with the question of art writing in various Indian languages.
