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 the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will creatively express the experiences of the everyday impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bidar through a series of Afsaanche—very short, paragraph-length stories in Urdu—and its digital exploration in the audio format of the podcast. As a literary form that emerged as a response to the short attention span caused by the internet, the Afsaanche in this project will aim to mark both the humanitarian actions as well as the disruptions of daily life during the pandemic. The outcome of the project will be the series of Afsaanche and the podcasts. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the series of Afsaanche and the audio files of the podcasts. Project funds will pay for honorarium, professional fees, and website domain and hosting.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will critically examine the conflicting emotions of pleasure and guilt in the context of self-awakening as a homosexual, and investigate the ethical representation of love and sexuality on screen with the help of intimacy experts. Critiquing the lack of sex education, the project will also trace the challenges of growing up as a homosexual person in India. The outcome of the project will be the script for a short film. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the script of the short film, and process documentation. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium and travel.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will engage with three popular children’s television shows from the late 1990s, as cultural documents in media that trace shifts in our lives in post-liberalisation India. Through this endeavour the project will reflect on the larger processes of urbanisation, globalisation, and representation in neo-liberal times. The outcome of the project will be drawings on ‘magic slates’. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a documentation of the drawings. Project funds will pay for materials, purchase of books and honorarium.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will examine how the trauma of seeing violent imagery online including on social media can be sublimated through drawing by hand. As a critique of the desensitisation caused by the incessant consumption of online images including those of violence, the project will explore how the aspects of materiality and time in drawing these images by hand transform their resonance and politics. The outcomes of the project will be a series of drawings and lecture performances. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a documentation of the drawings and lecture performances, along with screen recordings and videos created during the process. Project funds will pay for materials, consumables, professional fees, software subscriptions and honorarium.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will examine the lives and working conditions of migrant labourers of the brick kilns of Mirzapur through artistic collaboration with them. Through research and documentation the project will trace ironies in relationships between labour and development, such as women bearing the heavy load of bricks branded Durga, the Goddess often associated with women’s empowerment. The outcomes of the project will be a series of drawings, terracotta sculptures, photographs and a video documentary. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be documentation of the drawings and terracotta sculptures, as well as copies of the photographs and the documentary. Project funds will pay for materials, honorarium, professional fees, travel and living, and printing.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will experiment to create a form for Asunam, a non-Vedic mythical creature from Sangam Literature of the classical Tamil oeuvre. In a collaborative artistic process between a comics writer, an illustrator and a voice-over artist, this project will use motion and sound to imagine this mythical creature with surreal physical features and hypersensitivity to sound. The outcome of the project will be an audio-visual and a motion comic. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be process documentation of the collaboration, the audio-visual and the motion comic. Project funds will pay for professional fees and honorarium.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will be a collaboration between four contemporary dancers, rethinking and re-embodying ideas of community and co-work through a series of weekly or bi-weekly shared journeys. These four dancers, who are teacher-trainees of the Alexander technique, will examine ways to unite their solo investigations into a sustainable collective practice, focussing on process instead of production. The outcome of the project will be the process documentation and a collective journal in physical, digital or hybrid form. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be this process documentation, including those of the interactive open studio improvs and a collective journal in physical, digital or hybrid form. Project funds will pay for professional fees, space hire, honorarium, equipment hire and online subscriptions.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a series of artist books that investigate the history and evolution of printmaking technologies in Bengal. Focussed on five milestone methods of printmaking namely woodcut, block, offset, serigraph and digital technologies, the project will experiment with media, methods and book design formats to trace the history of printmaking to create new relationships between the reader and the book. The outcome of this project will be the series of five artist books, detailed process documentation and a physical and virtual exhibition on the evolution of print-technology in India. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the artist books, video documentation of the process, a download of the website containing the virtual exhibition along with the URL, and still and video documentation of the physical exhibition. Project funds will pay for professional fees, documentation, materials, transport, website creation and virtual exhibition, purchase of equipment (the scanner will be returned to IFA), physical exhibition and publicity.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a video game that investigates expressions of corporate culture and gendered labour as manifested on the computer interface. Created in the genre of a Fumblecore game, this project will explore the meaning of labour on the computer and create ways of subverting the hegemonic and gendered bodily relationships with the machine. The outcome of this project will be an online as well as a physical iteration of a Fumblecore game. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a download of the website comprising the game along with the URL, the process documentation of creating the game, and still and video documentation of the physical installation. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium, physical installation of the game and purchase of software.
