Staying Connected #21 | ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿಗರಿಗೆ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು ಅಂದ್ರೆ ಏನು? / What is Bangalore to its People? | May 13, 2022
What makes up a city? Which languages does it speak? Who gets to call it home? Is the city the same for each of its inhabitants? In this edition of Staying Connected, we bring to you the work of some of the artists who are engaging with Bangalore, the city that has been home to IFA for the past 26 years; information about events conducted by us in the last few months, and also what’s new at IFA.
How does a singer choose to express themselves in their own language - a language
that’s always been on the margins of the city?
Watch a music video (the first in a series) by Mohammed Affan Pasha, exhibiting the everydayness of Bangalore in his mother tongue Dakhni–a language that has been under threat of being erased, misnamed or compelled to submit and become a dialect and subset of a larger language and cultural group. Click here to know more about the ongoing project.
Mohammed Affan Pasha is Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project, implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Projects (Research/Practice) category of the Project 560 programme. The Project 560 programme in 2021-22 was supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.
In what ways does a community begin to call a new city its home?
Watch a documentary by Tejshvi Sajju Jain about the history of Bangalore’s Sindhi Colony in Cox Town. The film traces the various strands by which a community comes to call another city its home—through the memories and stories of the survivors of the Partition and their family members who have lived here across generations. Click here to know more about the project.
Tejshvi Sajju Jain received a grant from IFA in 2020-21 under the Neighbourhood Engagements category of the Project 560 programme.
Would you like to read some of the conversations we have had with artists and scholars
over the past twenty five years of celebrating the arts and culture?
IFA completed 25 years in the midst of the raging pandemic. To mark this milestone, we recently launched a special e-publication that holds space for IFA's engagement with the arts and culture over the 25 years. It is a rich set of 25 interviews with grantees and project coordinators, each offering a deep insight into their artistic thought processes, that have been published in our newsletters. Read and explore it here.
Can the objects in an ethnographic museum give us new perspectives
on our globalised present?
Can a traditional art form be creatively transformed into a potent tool for political activism?
Can an archive go beyond the popular images of monuments and landmarks to engage with the everyday life of a city?
Listen to conversations around three projects that explored these ideas in their own ways, organised as part of Project Showcase @ IFA, a series of online presentations to showcase, discuss, and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support across programmes.
Old Routes, New Journeys: Ethnography and Contemporary Art Practice in Ladakh
Click here to listen to a presentation by Abeer Gupta and his conversation with Latika Gupta, about his curatorial intervention at the Chansa or the Ladakhi Kitchen at the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), Bhopal, in 2017.
Abeer received a fellowship from IFA in 2016-17 to work with the IGRMS, Bhopal under the Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.
Lokshahir Anna Bhau Sathe and his Loknatya
Click here for a discussion between Milind Champanerkar and Sandesh Bhandare about Milind’s project that explored how Anna Bhau Sathe (1920-1969) used Loknatya – a transmuted version of the traditional Tamasha folk theatre form – to challenge the hierarchies of both class and caste.
Milind received a grant from IFA in 2019-20 under the Arts Research programme, made possible with support from Titan Company Limited.
Delhi Dialogues: Mapping the Everyday
Click here to listen to a conversation with Surajit Sarkar and Bhavin Shukla about the Delhi Visual Archive (DVA) at the Centre for Community Knowledge, Ambedkar University, and Bhavin’s engagement with the DVA’s collections and the resultant travelling exhibition – Delhi Dialogues (2017).
Bhavin received a fellowship from IFA in 2017-18 to work with the Delhi Visual Archive at the Centre for Community Knowledge, Ambedkar University, under the Archival and Museum Fellowship initiative, made possible with support from Tata Trusts.
Experience a Kalayatra, where IFA grantees share their work
with local communities and schools.
Watch the recording of the virtual Kalayatra organised by IFA, with teachers from Uttara Kannada District in Karnataka. At the session, two Arts Education grantees presented their projects: Subbulakshmi S was involved in a project that engaged students from Government Higher Primary School, Thonachikoppal, Mysuru with ‘Talk Story’, a storytelling process that connected their personal lives with the school curriculum, and Santhosh DD’s project engaged students of Government Higher Primary School in Hassan district with a local folk art form ‘Somana Kunitha’ to help the children apply it in the texts in their curriculum.
Kalayatras are a vital part of our Arts Education programme, designed in the hope that they will develop comprehensive approaches for integrating the arts with the school curricula, strengthening arts instruction and improving the students’ academic performance.
This session was conducted in Kannada.
Events from The IFA Archive
How do artists reflect on the archival memory of the materials
produced during their quests?
Can the archive be a space beyond scholarly pursuits and open itself
to other forms of artistic explorations?
The IFA Archive Open House is a series of conversations with artists and scholars around the materials deposited at the IFA Archive at the end of their projects. Click here to watch the first Open House event, held in conversation with academic Epsita Halder and contemporary photographer Abul Kalam Azad.
Date with The Archive is a series of talks by artists across different practices who have used archives extensively for their creative work, to bring to focus the potential of the archive as a significant resource for artistic explorations. Click here to watch the first such Date, with dancer and choreographer Navtej S Johar.
The IFA Archive is built with support from the Indorama Charitable Trust.
Open Calls for Proposals
Are you an artist, scholar, cultural practitioner
hoping to apply for support from IFA?
- Project 560: Tap into Bangalore’s varied voices, spaces, histories, memories, aspirations, and expressions! Apply under the Arts Projects (Research/Practice) category by May 23, 2022.
- Arts Practice: The programme accepts proposals where artists expand their present range of practices in new directions. Apply under the Productions category by May 26, 2022.
- Arts Education: The programme is currently accepting proposals from Teachers and Artists looking to work with government schools in Karnataka. Apply by July 31, 2022.
Programmes open throughout the year:
- Arts Practice: You can apply under the categories of Workshops, Residencies, Seminars, and Arts Platforms throughout the year.
- Project 560: The Curated Artistic Engagements category under the programme also accepts proposals throughout the year.
Look out for the calls for Request for Proposals of the other programmes at IFA over the next few months!
New Projects
We are delighted to announce the implementation of 30 new projects made between January and March 2022 under Arts Education, Arts Research, the Arts Projects (Research/Practice) category of Project 560 programme, Archives and Museums programme and the Arts Platforms category of Arts Practice, ending the year 2021-22 with 52 projects. Read more about them below.
Siddayya Kallayya Mathapati (Arts Education) will engage fifth grade students of the Government Higher Primary School in Chikkahandigol village, Gadag district with the local folk art forms of Sobane Pada, Gee Gee Pada, Lavani, Kolatada Pada, Beesuva Kallina Pada, Hanti Hadu and Holi Hadu, which are rapidly disappearing from the cultural life of the region.
Ranganatha SR (Arts Education) will engage students from fifth, sixth and seventh grades of the Government Higher Primary School in Kudregundi village, Chikkamagalur district, to study Kuvempu’s Malegalalli Madumagalu, a novel written in the landscape that the students inhabit.
Rajashekara Murthy KV (Arts Education) will engage eighth grade students of the high school section of the Government Pre-University College, in Krishna Raja Sagara, Mandya district, to explore the impact of the Krishna Raja Sagara dam on the lives and livelihoods of local communities.
Venkatesh Prasad HD (Arts Education) will engage sixth grade students of the Morarji Desai Residential School in Nuggehalli village in Hassan district, with the project titled Karakushala Kale Enda Patya Dhedege (From Handicrafts to School Curriculum) to learn about bamboo.
Parameshwaraiah Soppimata (Arts Education) will engage sixth and seventh grade students of the Government Model Higher Primary School in Maalavi village in Vijayanagara district, in Nammade Bank Nammade Duddu (Our Bank Our Money) - a study of the banking system in India.
Manjunatha A (Arts Education) will engage eighth grade students of the Government High School in Baganakatte, Shivamogga district, with an in-depth study of stone inscriptions in Shivamogga and developing a short theatre script on the local stories inscribed on these inscriptions by connecting it to their Kannada language curriculum.
Byregowda M (Arts Education) will engage students from fifth and sixth grade of the Government Higher Primary School in Avverahalli, Ramanagara district, to explore flora and fauna of the seven hills around Ramanagara through a series of hiking expeditions and engagements with visual arts, theatre and storytelling, which connect to their geography, science and language curriculum.
Rupsa Ray (Arts Research) will explore various methods of worship across different Sufi traditions in West Bengal. It will inquire into the religious and political conditions in which Sufi Dargahs and Majars in the region have flourished over time.
Devika Sundar (Arts Research) will examine the complex and elusive quality of pain specific to women and subjective patient experience vis-à-vis standardised diagnostic testing and normative clinical procedures and will inquire how the female body is studied, written, mapped and visualised in allopathy, Ayurveda and homoeopathy.
Ronidkumar Chingangbam (Arts Research) will study the sociopolitical and cultural history of Manipur between the 1960s and 1970s through the work of a group of poets known as the ‘Angry Poets of Manipur’.
Savitha Suresh Babu (Arts Research) will investigate the ways in which youth from marginalised caste groups navigate the contemporary Kannada theatre space, by examining the nature of conflicts they grapple with to claim their cultural legacies.
Hemachandran Karah (Arts Research) will study the nondominant Tamil narrative traditions which are replete with instances of disfigurements, associated with two deities - Sudalai Madan and Madurai Veeran.
Anmol Tikoo (Arts Projects) will explore and engage with Bangalore as a centre for mental health and well-being through documentation of conversations, stories and historical narratives of persons using the city’s mental health infrastructure, caregivers and mental health experts.
Salila Prasad Vanka (Arts Projects), will investigate the narratives of visual culture and spatial politics in the city of Bangalore through a study of the evolution of public statues and sculptures since the early 1990s.
Akash Srinivas (Archives and Museums) will develop a series of podcasts based on the materials available at the SL Bhatia History of Medicine Museum focusing on themes related to the history of medicine, traditional medical practices and beliefs, evolution of modern-day medical procedures, women and medicine, deities of disease, and mental health and institutions in colonial India, amongst others.
Ammel Sharon (Archives and Museums) will research, document and analyse how the University of Mysore has been documented and portrayed in the Star of Mysore newspaper since the late 70s.
Meera Krishnamurthy (Archives and Museums) will create short animated pieces strung together as a film in English and Kannada, bringing to life a selection of the exhibited objects from the SL Bhatia Museum, Library and Archives.
Mahalakshmi Prabhakar and Aranyani Bhargav (Arts Platforms) will curate a series of discussion sessions on the online platform titled Re-Cognising Dance which hopes to build robust and stimulating conversations on neglected themes, bridge the classical-folk divide, and provide access to resources, collaborations, scholars and mentors in the field of dance.
In FY 2021-22, the Arts Research programme was made possible with support from BNP Paribas India, the Archives and Museums programme was part-supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi; the Project 560 and Arts Practice programmes were both supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.
Sandooka
The Living Museum of Kodava Culture
Would you like to be a part of a virtual museum’s archive?
IFA has embarked on a new project to create a virtual museum: Sandooka The Living Museum of Kodava Culture - an interactive online space for the rich heritage of the Kodavas of Coorg, Karnataka. Expected to be launched in early 2023, the museum will serve as a participatory living journal of Kodava life through an exploration of material and intangible resources including those collected from the community. You can be a part of it too! Send in stories, images, songs, objects, memories, etc. related to Coorg and Kodava culture here: www.sandookamuseum.org
The team putting this museum together comprises Lina Vincent, art historian and curator - 'OBJECTSPEAK', Nitin Kushalappa MP, author and researcher, and Upasana Roy and Saurav Roy, the founders of SWITCH. The team was selected through a public call for proposals and evaluation by a jury comprising Venu Vasudevan, Paul Abraham, Sara Ahmed, Hemanth Satyanarayana and Nick Merriman. The team works closely with an esteemed Advisory Group comprising Rathi Vinay Jha, CP Belliappa and Hemanth Satyanarayana.
This initiative is managed by IFA and supported by Recaero India pvt ltd, which was established in 2005, and has been serving the aerospace industry as a leading spare parts specialist.
Work with Us
Come join our team to help raise resources in the arts and culture sector!
We are currently inviting applications for the position of Manager – Corporate Engagements and Individual Donor.
The candidate will join the Resource Mobilisation and Outreach team to expand and grow our corporate and individual donor engagements. This will include raising sponsorships, grants, and other support from the corporate sector, designing/implementing art events and specific arts services to raise funds, and developing fundraising campaigns. For more information about the role, please click here.
Application deadline: June 10, 2022.
Support Us
At IFA, we believe that the arts and culture are essential to our individual and community lives, and for a more equitable and just world. We continue to turn to the arts to regain trust and hope in our lives, and also take inspiration. We invite you to donate your loyalty points or become a Friend of IFA, and join a community that supports artists in adapting to changing realities and keeping their endeavours going.