For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions that will lead to the reimagination and revival of five puppet characters and their stories that are part of the string puppetry tradition of the Natt lineage of Rajasthan. Alongside the richness of artistic practice, the tradition, over generations, has also been subject to serious marginalisation and caste-based oppression of the practitioners. This project, while drawing on the strengths of traditional practice, will recreate the puppet characters and their narratives in ways that will subvert feudal, patriarchal and other hegemonic systems, thereby enabling conversations around oppression and resistance. The outcomes from this project will include the five newly created puppets and the accompanying stories, one live performance and 15 episodes of digital content that will be made available online. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final reports will be photographs and videos from the process and the live performance along with recordings of all the 15 episodes. Project funds will pay for contract fees, materials, travel and living, hire of equipment, hire of venue, publicity and communication.
For the Foundation Project implemented by IFA which will facilitate research towards documentation and recognition of Sikki and Moonj craft forms as important practices from the state of Bihar, using the existing collection at the regional gallery of the Bihar Museum, Patna as an entry-point. The project aims to create a research-based intervention to revive these crafts through a participatory designer-artist approach to ensure inclusivity of the community. The outcomes of the project will be a knowledge bank documenting the crafts in the form of brochures, catalogues for products that artists can make using the craft forms, and samples of products developed and created. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final reports will be the audio-visual documentation of the crafts, interviews of the artists, copies of brochures and product catalogues, the sample designs of the developed products with their photographs along with recordings of the workshops. This is a collaboration with the Bihar Museum. Project funds will pay for workshop costs, contract fees, travel and living, production, printing and purchase of books.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA that will study the unexplored history of shoemaking in Dehradun Valley to understand what the craft and making of essential objects tell us about the history of a place and people, especially the shoemakers in this case. The outcomes of this project will be a photo essay and a short film on a select set of shoemakers from Dehradun. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA, along with the final reports, will be the photo essay and the short film. Project funds will pay for contract fees, travel and living, printing, hire of equipment, library and archive fees, and stationery.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will situate the Yarshagumba, a medicinal mushroom in the upper Himalayas, as a nodal point to study the shifts in narratives of the pastoral Rung community as they move between one world with digital networks and another with oral traditions and myths, while harvesting this precious herbal produce used in Chinese medicine. The outcome of the project will be a script, a storyboard and a pitch trailer for a film. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the script, storyboard and the pitch trailer. Project funds will pay for travel and living, honorarium, equipment hire and professional fees.
For a film and photo-documentation of the murals in the Guru Ram Rai Durbar in Dehradun. The film will examine the relationship between the murals and their diverse viewers—the keepers in the shrine, art historians, restorers and worshippers—and explore how this rich repository of images reveals a history of power politics, syncretic religious practices of pre-colonial India and separate painting styles between the seventeenth and nineteenth century.
