For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Workshops, Residencies, Seminars which will create a music workshop on the folk and traditional music and culture of the Chakpa community in two villages, Phayeng and Leimaram, 30 km from Imphal. The workshop will bring together the few living Gurus and experts of the Chakpa cultural practices, and young artistes of Manipur who practice folk and traditional arts. The outcomes of the project would be the workshop, photographs, a collection of songs, and a new contemporary performance by the participants. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be photographs, collection of songs, workshop notes and audio-visual documentation of the workshop and performances. Project funds will pay for travel and living, professional fees, venue hire, honorarium and stationery.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Productions, to create a physical poetry performance that critiques the efficacy of six mega hydro projects in Manipur that fell short of their intended purpose. Based on detailed research into the ramifications of the Khuga, Khoupam, Singda and Thoubal dams, the Loktal project and the Dholaithabi barrage project, this work will be an artistic response to a flawed and degenerate political system. The outcome of this project will be the physical poetry performance. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA from this project will be still and video documentation of the process and the final production. Project funds will pay for professional fees, production, equipment hire, venue hire, honorarium, printing and publicity, resource persons’ fees, travel, and purchase of books and library fees.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Workshops, Residencies, Seminars which will create a design residency for architects and designers to reimagine the architectonics of performance spaces including those for theatre in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and physical distancing. The residency is inspired by Rustom Bharucha’s nine-episode speech act titled Theater & CoronaVirus. The outcome of the project will be orthographic drawings, volumetric and form models, essays and visual concept maps. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be photographs, audio-visual documentation of the workshop and outcomes, screen recordings of online sessions, architectural drawings and models in digital forms, link to the studio blog and an offline file of the studio blog at the time of project completion. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium and stationery.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations, which will examine the anatomy of a collective song We shall Overcome and its various iterations across time, geography, language and political context. This will be done by aggregating a vast array of data about its musicality, structure, popularity maps, analytics, and audience interactions such as YouTube comments. The envisioned outcome may start to take shape only as the project progresses and may be an intermedia work. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the process documentation and the intermedia work. Project funds will pay for professional fees, honorarium, printing, studio hire, books, web hosting and online subscriptions.
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.
