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 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 facilitating a series of visual arts appreciation workshops for all the students of a school (Classes Eight, Nine and Ten). He will collaborate with a visual arts college and local artists to design and execute the grant.
For a series of workshops with teachers from a school, which are expected to sensitise them to theatre education and expose them to the process adopted by the grantee as she works with them to realise a school production. Following the workshop, a smaller group of interested teachers will adapt a school text and co-direct plays in the school. The final productions will be shared with the school community.
For an exploration into the ethos of local Jatres (traditional fairs) with students, peers and teachers in the region. These grants will enable teachers to re-introduce students to the idea of Jatres as a storehouse of living traditions and help students contextualize this in terms of what they have learnt through their school texts. The students will document and also re-construct a Jatre within the school to celebrate with the village community.
This Grant was Terminated by IFA and the Grantee is ineligible to apply to IFA in the future.
For collaboration with young artists to video document the work of 180 contemporary visual artists in and around Bangalore. These videos will be uploaded on a website, circulated to regional art schools across Karnataka as a monthly DVD magazine, and screened every two weeks in Bangalore.
This Grant was Terminated by IFA and the Grantee is ineligible to apply to IFA in the future.
For research into the poetry of Malayalam poet Kadamanitta Ramakrishnan and the ritual folk performance form, Padayani, towards the creation of a new performance work. The resulting performance will try to combine Kadamanitta’s lyrics, the rhythms and theatrical expressions of Padayani—which the poet often used to accentuate and embellish his public performances—with the sound of rock, reggae and the blues.
For research towards a travelling exhibition kit consisting of materials from the Archives of Indian Labour. This project will also extend earlier research with migrant labourers in Bangalore that culminated in a short film titled In Transience. The kit will make material from the Archives available to a wider public and the footage gathered during the filming of In Transience will be deposited in the Archive.
For research towards a book on the impact of recording technology on South Indian classical music, especially the role played by women singers of the early twentieth century, who adapted an elaborate art form to the demands of a fledgling audio recording medium. The study will reconstruct the lives of these forgotten women and analyse how their refashioning of ragas and compositions for the three-minute recording format contributed to the subsequent development of Carnatic music.
