Greetings from the team at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)! Hope you are safe and well during these unprecedented times.

We are back with news on our work between July and October, 2020! Despite the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to present to the arts and culture sector, we have been working hard across our programmes to support the field.

Apart from this, we are excited to announce our very special 25x25 initiative which we launched to mark 25 years of grantmaking at IFA. Coupled with our 25th anniversary, the internet in India turns 25 this year. Bringing both these ideas together, we sent out a call for proposals under the theme 25 Years of Internet in India which saw an overwhelming response from the field. Out of the 129 proposals received, we made 25 grants of Rs 25,000 each covering diverse languages, regions and a wide spectrum of disciplines and art forms. These projects will culminate in a collective online showcase early next year. Stay tuned!

This initiative is supported by lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners Titan Company Limited, and Priya Paul and Sethu Vaidyanathan.

The names of the 25 grantees who received grants under the 25x25 initiative

The 25 grants made under this initiative are as follows:

 Abhishek Hazra
To create a video lecture performance that speculates the future of artistic sovereignty, amidst threats to digital privacy in the age of surveillance statecraft.

 Aishwarya Guha aka Oishorjyo
To create an audio-drama based on 25 stories of women, who have used the internet to flip the power structure and reverse the gaze.

 Amoolya Narayan
To create a dystopic science fiction tale exploring human relationship with the internet and the possible impact of its absence.

 Anandana Kapur
To study the construction of digital deities, trans-human and cyborg identities through the creation of a cyborg goddess in Augmented Reality and an e-portal.

 Andrew Prashanth aka CG Salamander
To make a 25-panel non-fiction comic on the evolution of the internet in India.

 Bhumika Ahuja
To explore the history of social media in India over the past 25 years through embroidery on textile and stop motion animation.

 Debkamal Ganguly
To excavate email archives in an attempt to trace human journeys through its digital footprints over the years.

 Joe Paul Cyriac
To make a series of tricolour gum bichromate prints and sculptures by appropriating images collected from panoramas of India uploaded by Google Street contributors.

 Kaamna Patel
To explore, through photography, notions of nostalgia, temporality, hyperreality and alienation in the age of technology and the internet.

 Khayal Ajaybhai Trivedi
To create an animated website that explores the complex and multi-dimensional relationship we have with the internet.

 Matta Sri Vamsi
To create a publication that captures various stories of people from marginalised communities, as shared on the internet.

 Ritwika Pal
To create a short film about love and the internet.

 Rustam Mazumdar
To create an audio-visual medley of montages on the ways in which the internet perpetuates and enhances the contexts that cause violent behaviour.

 Sahil Ahuja
To make a short film that explores the impact on education and shifts in the lives and work of teachers, who are compelled to use digital technology and the internet to teach during the pandemic.

 Sandhya Kumar
To create short videos that explore the impact of internet shutdowns and throttling, across different regions in India.

 Sanskriti Chattopadhyay
To create a video art project that seeks to explore digital consciousness.

 Shakti Milan Sharma
To make a zine that explores aspects of sexuality on the internet, through the erotic lives and experiences of people online.

 Shruthi Vishwanath
To create live and pre-recorded performances, conversations and feminist readings with rural and urban womxn artists who will cohabit the cyberspace at midnight for 25 nights.

 Shruti Chamaria
To create a photo documentation of the abandoned, ignored and almost invisible infrastructure of cybercafés in Bangalore.

 Soumendra Bhattacharya
To create an experimental mixed media audio-visual presentation that explores the physical and emotional isolation of people in a world hyperconnected through technology.

 Subuhi Jiwani
To make a short film exploring urban India’s engagement and experience with online dating apps.

 Sukanya Deb
To create hypertext poetry/ fiction based on an exploration of the place of pornography and erotic imagery in India from the past to contemporary times.

 Vandana Kumari Pandey aka Vandana Asha
To make a film that examines the issues of increased online harassment against women in India.

 Vikram Phukan
To create a theatrical performance that will look at death and mourning in the age of the internet, through the particular lens of queer communities online.

 Vinay Abhishek Vemu
To make an audio play that will relive the moments of accessing internet cafes for the first time 25 years ago.

We turn to the arts when we are joyful; we turn to the arts when we grieve. And in times of uncertainty and despair, we turn to arts again for sustaining our hopes. The arts enable us to forge solidarities, make sense of the present, and come together to imagine collective futures. This is especially true of now when the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt and alter our lives. More here, than ever anywhere else, the arts must remind us of the human capacity to endure, re-imagine, and create.

We at IFA thus continue to support projects across our programmes. The Archives and Museums programme is open for submissions of proposals. We realise that during these times, projects will need fresh modes of thinking, creating, and presenting the arts, as well as new imaginations of engagement with audiences and communities. We encourage and welcome such enquiries and explorations, within the mandate of our programmes. We hope that we will emerge more resilient and compassionate from this global crisis.

The Project 560 programme at IFA is committed to a long-term, continuous engagement with the city of Bangalore through multipronged strategies including grantmaking and collaborations.

Grants under Project 560 are made available under three categories - Grants for Arts Projects (Research/Practice), Grants for Curated Artistic Engagements and Grants for Neighbourhood Engagements.

For the Calls for Proposals sent out in the first quarter, we received 26 proposals out of which we have made three grants under Arts Projects (Research and Practice), two under Curated Artistic Engagements and three under Neighbourhood Engagements.We are delighted to introduce you to our recent grantees and their projects:

Grants for Arts Projects (Research/Practice)

Rukmini Swaminathan, a researcher, received a grant to create an online soundscape of the city, drawn from journeys undertaken on the route of the No 201 series of buses in Bangalore. Weaving together personal and shared experiences on Bangalore’s bus journeys, this project, through the sensorial experience of sound and written text, aims to understand the persona of the city through sonic experiences on the bus. The outcomes of the project will be a curated bus album of soundscapes and songs played in the bus, a website containing the bus route maps embedded with the sounds on these routes and a journal of personal impressions from the bus trips.

Indu Antony, a visual and performance artist, received a grant to explore into the distinct smells that make up the city of Bangalore. Drawing upon interviews and research, the project seeks to understand the relationship between memory, associations, people and places through olfactory perceptions and imaginations. The outcomes of this project will be a book containing photographs, research text and an olfactory map of Bangalore with specially created samples of perfume.

Yash Bhandari, a visual and performance artist, received a grant to explore the many-layered relationships between water and the resident communities of the Chikkapete area of Bangalore. The project seeks to bring together socio-cultural, historical, ecological and economic research, and diverse artistic engagements to investigate into the water practices in the area. Through collecting, mapping and re-narrating water stories, the attempt is to integrate the multiple perspectives that exist around water in the locality. The outcomes of this project will be a series of on-site and online multi-media exhibitions, talks, events and an online archive of all research and artistic outcomes.

Grants for Curated Artistic Engagements

Karthik Kuduva Gopinath, a contemporary artist, received a grant to make an experimental docu-fiction film which will explore the precariousness of the lives and work of freelance Computer Graphics (CG) and Visual Effects (VFX) artists in the South Indian film industry. It will explore the dual invisibility of these artists - within the organised film studio system as well as in the aspired anonymity of the CG image itself - making their existence fragile and tenuous. The outcomes of the project will be the film and part of the work hosted on an online portal as interactive digital fictions.

Grants for Neighbourhood Engagements

Tejshvi Sajju Jain, a curator, received a grant to examine the history, memories, and experiences of the Sindhi community that has made Bangalore their home post the Partition of India. Through interviews across two generations, the project will explore notions of identity and home, memories of tradition, and experiences within the changing cityscape of Bangalore. The outcome of the project will be a short film.

Ganapathy BP, an artist received a grant to explore the Raithara Santhe or farmers market in the Shivanahalli neighbourhood of Bangalore. Drawing from detailed interviews with residents, shop owners and push-cart sellers, the project seeks to identify stories, memories and experiences of the community to this neighbourhood’s unique food culture through artistic interventions. The outcome of the project will be artwork/s evoking the santhe at a central location in Shivanahalli.

Nikita Teresa Sarkar, an artist, received a grant to explore the ecology of birds in the Kammanahalli neighbourhood of Bangalore. By inviting residents to experience, share and create spaces for birds, the project will attempt to build their connections to the environment and encourage accountability towards it. The outcome of the project will be the artistic interventions that the residents will undertake, and a film documenting their reflections.

The Arts Research programme supports scholars, researchers, and practitioners to undertake research into the various histories and expressions of artistic practices in India. It seeks to foster wider perspectives, understandings, interpretations, and engagements in the arts.

The Calls for Proposals sent out earlier this year saw an overwhelming response with 700 enquiries, 653 draft proposals and 607 final proposals, from almost all states and union territories, viz. Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. 

They cover a broad disciplinary spectrum that includes cultural studies, film histories, folklore and folk culture, popular culture, labour histories, local histories, oral histories, music, traditional arts, performing arts, photography, visual arts, culinary practices, among others. After perusing all proposals, programme staff has chosen 129 for internal evaluation after which a select set will be further evaluated with the help of a panel of external evaluators.

The selected projects will be announced in February 2021. Stay tuned!

The Arts Research programme for the year 2020-2021 is part-supported by Titan Company Limited.

The Arts Practice programme supports critical practice in the arts and accepts proposals all year round. It encourages practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question existing notions through their practice. We are delighted to introduce you to our recent grantees and their projects:

Susnato Chowdhury, an independent journalist and writer, received a grant for an artistic and scholarly inquiry into the history of publishing in Darjeeling, with a focus on Nepali publications. Drawing on an earlier project supported by IFA that studied the design and editing practices of Bengali Little Magazines in the digital age, this dissemination grant seeks to cover the gap of scholarship in the nearly 100-year-old history of publishing in Nepali in West Bengal. The outcomes of the project will be an exhibition, a panel discussion and the publication of a booklet.
This grant is part-supported by Infosys Foundation.

Shahi AJ, a filmmaker, received a grant for the creation of an experimental film on the city of Lucknow and its architectonics, based on the literary oeuvre of Urdu litterateur Naiyer Masud. The film, a combination of animation sequences and documentary footage, is imagined as a visual letter and travelogue that speaks to Naiyer Masud about the city of Lucknow - one that was ubiquitous in his literary world. It will attempt to unravel the inherent differences between the Lucknow depicted in Masud’s fictional universe and the real city in the present. The outcomes of the project will be the script and the film.
This grant is part-supported by Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company.

Renu Savant, a filmmaker received a grant for the making of a film-document based on the presence of seasonal migrant labourers in Mirya, a fishing village on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra. Since Mirya is the ancestral village of the filmmaker, it will also be a personal expression of an attempted dialogue, momentary friendships and precarious encounters through the camera, with the men who work as migrant labourers there. The outcome of the project will be the film-document.

The Arts Practice programme is undergoing a review and will therefore remain closed from November 01, 2020 to March 31, 2021. The new programme will be launched after April 2021.

The Arts Education programme titled Kali Kalisu, (‘Learn and Teach’ in Kannada), focusses on integrating arts with the curriculum in government schools in Karnataka. It attempts to achieve this objective through grants made to artists and teachers; and facilitating training workshops for teachers and administrators. Since the programme supports projects in schools and engages teachers and artists, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown up new challenges which we have never faced before. With the uncertainty of the current situation, we have been trying our level best to continue our work through online events and engagements.

Hejjegalu 2018-2019

We are delighted to announce the latest version of Hejjegalu (‘Footsteps’) 2018-2019, an annual publication reflecting on the significant impact and reach of the Kali Kalisu programme of IFA. Featuring grantees and their projects, and the larger story of arts education in India, this publication will serve a vital resource and document for key persons and organisations in the field of Education in Karnataka – teachers, art educators, and policy makers.

A page from Hejjegalu 2018-2019

Browse through Hejjegalu and get a sense of Kali Kalisu projects, accompanied with rich illustrations! This edition 2018-2019 was co-edited by IFA Arts Education grantees Kotresh B and Ningu Solagi and designed by Ningu Solagi, has been supported by the Singhal Iyer Family Foundation (SIFF). Click here to download.

Kala Yatra

This component is designed to enable grantees to share their work with schools and the local communities. Through this, we hope that together, they will develop comprehensive approaches for integrating the arts with the school curricula, strengthening arts instruction and improving the students’ academic performance.

Given the restrictions due to COVID-19 pandemic, we hosted the last two Kala Yatras online on zoom, for teachers from the Dakshina Kannada and Koppala districts on September 11, 2020 and September 18, 2020 respectively. A total of 78 teachers participated in these sessions. IFA grantees, Prajna Hegde and Sunil Kumar AM presented their projects at the session organised for teachers in the Dakshina Kannada disctrict, and Siddappa Biradar and Shanthamani at the session hosted for teachers in the Koppala disctrict. Both the sessions concluded with active group discussions. Click here and here for the recordings.

The Arts Education programme for the year 2020-2021 is part-supported by Citi India.

The objective of the Archives and Museums programme, launched in April 2019 for a period of three years, is to continue to energise museums and archives as platforms for dialogue and discourse. We will provide the institution, as well as scholars and practitioners, the opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches to engage the public, based on materials in selected archives and museums. The focus will be on both institutions and individuals, encouraging them to become co-producers of knowledge and expertise. The programme will select and work in collaboration with eight institutions – four archives and four museums – for the first project cycle. It will also prioritise processes as well as outcomes, so as to ensure that capacity building at these selected Archives and Museums will take place alongside knowledge production and artistic creation.

The Archives and Museums programme (AMP) will implement three kinds of projects in association with the chosen institutions – Scholarly Projects, Creative Projects and Technical Projects – over a period of a year.

The Request for Proposals (RFP) for the IFA-PARI Creative projects was circulated last quarter. As soon as the RFP went out, enquiries started pouring in, and we have got an overwhelming response of 130 proposals. We are now in the process of shortlisting those proposals and the selected projects will be announced in January 2021.

Request for Proposals for FA-VMH Creative Project and IFA-VMH Scholarly Project is now Open
Deadline: January 05, 2021

Request for Proposals: IFA-VMH Creative and Scholarly Projects

Write to Suman Gopinath at suman@indiaifa.org for more details.

The Archives and Museums programme is part-supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

The IFA Archive is now online with 304 grants from the years 2006 to 2015 online. Watch a montage video featuring four arts projects from The IFA Archive which explore the identities, relationships, movements and conditions of labour in India. These projects supported over the years enable us to reflect on the underlying concerns around labour that have always been part of our invisible histories.

The IFA Archive is built with support from the Lohia Foundation.

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In the absence of our usual live grant showcases in the form of presentations, performances, panel discussions, film screenings which allowed for interactions with multiple audiences across the country, the team at IFA discussed internally and decided to go digital, create exciting spaces of discovery and discussion online. Below is an account of these activities over the last few months:

STAYING CONNECTED

With the hope to stay connected with the larger IFA community over email and social media platforms, we have been sharing the work of our grantees and other resources from the world of arts and culture. Browse through the series to find material that we hope you will like engaging with - Conversations at an Arts Festival and a Report on Contemporary Dance, It is Time to Turn to the Philosophers, A Special Treat of Theatre, Different Projects, Diverse Tastes, and many more.

A still from Wittgenstein Plays Chess With Marcel Duchamp, or How Not To Do Philosophy by Amit Dutta

THROWBACK THURSDAYS WITH IFA

During the lockdown period, we introduced an online series of grant showcases titled Throwback Thursdays with IFA to share the work of our grantees with our audiences in the form of conversations, film screenings, and performances. In this quarter, we organised six such sessions, and on the whole, we organised 11 sessions under the series. While it was an enriching experience for the IFA team, we learnt that the online space is challenging given the technical inconsistencies, and is inundated with all kinds of talks, presentations and events. Therefore, rather than adding more virtual time, we are currently in the process of ideating on how we can make our online grant showcases more engaging and effective for our audiences. We will announce the new series in the next newsletter. Stay tuned!

The poster of Hijrat Ke Bol, a presentation by Nirmala

Watch the recordings of the six sessions organised under this series in this quarter here:
Once There was a Lake | A Presentation by Chanakya Vyas
Nannura Kaudi (Quilt from My Place) | In Conversation with Jahanara
Ema Gi Wari (Stories of My Mother) | A Session by Ronidkumar Chingangbam aka Akhu
Hijrat Ke Bol | A Presentation by Nirmala
A Journey in Space and Time: The Making of the Raman Research Institute (RRI) Archival Gallery | A Presentation by Ramya Ramesh
Art in the Neighbourhood: Exploring Richards Town | A Presentation by Anaheeta Pinto

FUNDRAISER FOR IFA

IFA organised its first online fundraiser Story Reading by Motley, of Teen Ishqiya Afsaane ('Three Love Stories') by Ismat Chughtai, featuring Ratna Pathak Shah, Heeba Shah and Naseeruddin Shah on August 22, 2020, which also coincided with IFA's first fundraiser by Motley hosted in 2003, marking 17 years of working together. On October 03 and 04, 2020, an On-Demand Streaming of the recording was presented for our audiences who missed the live reading. Hindustan Chhod Do ('Quit India'), a tragic tale of epic proportions was read Ratna Pathak Shah; Nivala ('The Morsel'), a whimsical take on life in a big city was read by Heeba Shah and Jadein ('Roots'), a story about the unbreakable bond between a person and home was read by Naseeruddin Shah.

Naseeruddin Shah, Arundhati Ghosh, Heeba Shah and Ratna Shah at Story Reading by Motley

COLLABORATIONS

A Singular Journey: The career and life of polymath artist-designer Riten Mozumdar (1927-2006) by Ushmita Sahu and Mortimer Chatterjee

IFA in collaboration with the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) organised a talk by Ushmita Sahu and Mortimer Chatterjee, on the life and work of artist-designer Riten Mozumdar—one of the most significant figures in the history of modern Indian design. The talk hosted on August 19, 2020 focussed on certain areas of undocumented cultural, political and institutional histories, to address this lacuna with Riten Mozumdar at the centre of its enquiry. Watch the video below.

Fear, Funding and Freedom of Expression: Artistic Freedom in 2020

IFA and SMART - Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre organised a webinar titled Fear, Funding and Freedom of Expression: Artistic Freedom in 2020 on September 29, 2020, funded by the International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners: www.goethe.de/relieffund. This panel, was organised as part of In the Round, a series of conversations on creativity, culture and context. The panellists were Aditi Mangaldas (dancer, choreographer), Bose Krishnamachari (artist, curator), Purva Naresh (playwright, director), Sambhaji Bhagat (activist, playwright, balladeer and moderator, Vinutha Mallya (journalist, editor). Click here for the recording of the session.

Our staff members were invited to speak at online discussions on arts and philanthropy.

Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, IFA moderated a discussion with dancer Aditi Mangaldas titled Within...From Within hosted by the Bangalore International Centre on August 07, 2020. Click here for the recording of the session. She was part of a panel discussion titled Cultural Policy and Funding in Times of Multiple Crises. The session was organised as part of the conference titled HOW TO BE TOGETHER?: Conversations about international exchange and collaboration in the Performing Art by Zürcher Theater Spektakel and of Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Click here for the recording of the session. Arundhati also presented at the 5th episode of the Adeste European Conference titled Tempestuous times – the crisis – recovery and change. Click here for the recording.

Menaka Rodriguez, Head of Resource Mobilisation and Outreach, IFA, was on a panel titled The Future of Grantmaking in a Post-Covid World on August 18, 2020 at an online arts fundraising summit,  Defining the New Normal, organised by The Management Centre (=mc), UK.

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This year has been hard on us financially, with a majority of our donor funds being diverted to urgent COVID-19 relief and the new FCRA amendments affecting us adversely. Therefore, we, at IFA need your support more than ever to continue enabling artists to sustain their work and continue to create. As you help the myriad others who need you to stand by them at this critical hour, do also help us so we can make many more grants to artists and scholars who themselves are in dire situations.

During this pandemic, support arts and culture. Support IFA

In these times, we call upon every one of you, who have placed their faith in our work, to help us extend support to the field. There are many ways you can support IFA:

 Donate to the Fund for Supporting Arts and Culture during COVID-19 (F-SAC). No contribution is small; you can donate any amount starting from Rs 250!
 You can also support us by Becoming a Friend of IFA with a donation from Rs 5,000/- onwards

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

Thanks in advance for your generosity and support.

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