Staying Connected #15 | The Archive Is A Place To Remember, Reimagine | February 01, 2021

How can the archives be energised as a platform for dialogue and discourse? Can archival material be re-activated and re-imagined for the present and the future? What are some of the new, critical, and creative ways to engage a wider public with the archive? Today, under the Staying Connected Series by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), we bring you an installation by Priya Sen and a Dastangoi performance by Kafeel Jafri, both of which explore these ideas in exciting ways.

Seevbalak's Echochamber by Priya Sen

Seevbalak's Echochamber is an installation using text, sound, and projections at the AIIS Archive & Research Centre for Ethnomusicology in Gurgaon. This work was made as part of a fellowship Priya Sen received from IFA in 2015, under the Archival and Museum Fellowship programme, in collaboration with The Archive & Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (AIIS) to engage with the music and recordings of their Diaspora Collections. Her focus has been on Indian music from Trinidad and Mauritius, as well as the music of the Sidi community of Indian Africans in Gujarat. Priya listened to many hours of fragments of sound worlds that revolved around movements, migration, territory, and homelands. Priya has attempted, through this project, to think about the possibilities of creative practice in an audiovisual archive that is concerned mainly with preservation and research. Click here to watch the installation.

Priya received a fellowship from IFA in 2015 to work with the Archive and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology, Gurgaon, under the Archival & Museum Fellowship programme that was made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

Exhibition design: Sudeep Chaudhuri and Priya Sen
Courtesy: Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies (ARCE), Gurgaon and Shubha Chaudhuri, Director, ARCE

Dastan ek Talib ki ('Story of a Seeker') by Kafeel Jafri

Dastan ek Talib ki ('Story of a Seeker') is a Dastangoi performance, commissioned specially for The Launch of The IFA Archive at the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore in 2018. The performance explores the idea of the archive as a space for memory and history. It is the story of a young boy who sets out to find answers to his questions and ends up in a magical world where the lives, artistic practices, and quests of his many ancestors mesmerise him. Click here to watch the recording of the performance. 

The IFA Archive is built with support from the Lohia Foundation and its launch was organised in collaboration with Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore.