For the development of a new choreographic work titled The Rhythm Divine—a collaboration between dancer-choreographer and a master of the Pung Cholom form of Manipur, and his team. The artists will try to assimilate each other’s movement styles and then, through an improvisatory sawaal-jawaab process, create a new contemporary ‘stage-scape’ and idiom of dance.
For research into Dastangoi, a sixteenth century performed art of storytelling in Urdu. The artist will explore the form by composing new and experimental dastaans (stories), training more dastangos, and performing in some of the older parts of North India where the form originated.
For the creation of a series of short video-poems, animation sequences of digital paintings, still photographs, collages, and site specific live-action video responding to the changing visual environment of Kolkata and the increasing presence of mass-produced images across the city. The series will be played on the closed-circuit television monitors of the Metro Railway in Kolkata.
For the development of a theatre production titled The Wedding Party which simulates an urban middle-class wedding in order to explore issues of gender, class and sexuality. The audience will be ‘invitees’ to the wedding, positioned to both observe and participate in the proceedings. The ‘fourth wall’ of theatre will be broken by ‘performing’ the play in a non-theatre space like a marriage hall, complete with all the accoutrements of a typical urban wedding.
For the development of a production of Quick Death, a physical play text written by the Australian playwright Richard Murphet. Quick Death is the first of a trilogy of productions through which actors will be prepared to approach physical texts effectively and methods of training developed to facilitate them to become autonomous and interpretative.
For the production of a performance-based show involving fine art, theatre movement, dance, state-of-the-art materials and light design, titled The Pink Balloon. The story is based on a small book of original artwork of sketches, and uses a pink balloon as a metaphor to describe a journey from birth to the final attainment of bliss.
For the production and post-production of two films that will complete the Sikkim trilogy inaugurated with the IFA-supported The Listener’s Tale. Emerging out of the research and production of the first film, these subsequent films will move closer to places and people in an attempt to capture the everyday, which underlies the grand design of Tibetan Buddhism in Sikkim.
For research into and documentation of the Reshma-Chuharmal Nautanki, a popular Dalit folk theatre performance of Bihar. The project will explore how identities, caste and power are contested in and through this performance. Different versions of the Reshma-Chuharmal story, both in its performed and written form, will be collated, transcribed, translated and analysed to understand how they reflect a changing sense of identity among the Dalits.
For research towards a comparative study of Bengal scroll painting and Gond art from Madhya Pradesh. The researcher will travel to the Naya village in West Bengal, home of the Patuas who create the pata chitra paintings, and to Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, home of the Gonds. She will explore their visual landscape in light of the changes that their art has undergone due to state patronage and market forces.
For the making of a documentary film on the local Ladakhi film industry. The film will explore how and why the Ladakhi film industry emerged, how it sustains itself and where it wants to go.
For research and field work to compile Sindhi oral narratives in the border region of western Rajasthan and Kutch. In particular, the various forms of the premakhyans (love narratives), which are the most popular of the various Sindhi oral narratives, will be contextualised and investigated. The research will lead to a series of articles or a short monograph.
For building of an archive of photographs of urban middle-class women of Bengal from the 1880s to the 1970s. The project will critically and thematically archive and read the economy of photographic practices including modes of representation and resistances connected with the lives of urban middle-class Hindu/ Brahmo women in Bengal.
For research into and documentation of the history of cartoons in West Bengal and Bangladesh towards a book in Bengali. The research will examine the relationship between public life and cartoons while paying particular attention to individual cartoonists whose work has contributed significantly to the development of the form.
For preparatory research towards a screenplay for a feature-length film on Hindi writer Nirmal Verma. Through in-depth historical research on Verma’s European period, study of Verma’s published and unpublished writings, interviews with individuals who played significant roles in Verma’s life, the researcher will extend his literary knowledge of Nirmal Verma into a cinematic language.
For three editions of the annual summer artists’ residencies, PEERS. The grant will enable Khoj to offer ten residencies, and hold a one-time retrospective exhibition of art work emerging from PEERS. It is expected that this continued support for PEERS will expand the initiative’s reach and scale, and facilitate a greater engagement of contemporary artists with the public at large.
