Ever wondered what stories a book whispers when it’s been on a shelf for decades? Or how a film, a photograph, or a handwritten note can speak across time? This year has been a busy and exciting year for The IFA Archive—bringing materials to life, exploring personal and institutional archiving, and celebrating creative journeys through workshops, screenings, and hands-on experiences. Step inside to explore how archives preserve the past, inspire the present, and spark new creative possibilities...
In the last year, we’ve had the chance to read and engage with many project ideas. As always, we are most struck with the enquiries and concerns that artists occupy themselves with, and it in turn, expands our understanding of the world. We also had an intense but exciting time engaging with everyone as we hosted a festival and a conference. It was heartening to look back on how the projects we’ve supported have evolved...
In this edition of Staying Connected, we focus on a project that explores the complex, elusive quality of female-specific pain and subjective patient experience against standardised diagnostic testing and procedures, to trace the hidden areas of experience that lie behind these dictated frames, markers and categorisations...
In this edition of Staying Connected, we look back on a project that speaks to the present times and our interactions with the internet. Created a little over four years ago, the project is a marriage between many art forms–film, music, theatre and dance–tracing the journey of a group of friends as the internet pervades every part of their lives...
In this edition of Staying Connected, we showcase two projects implemented by us that created podcasts that engage with diverse histories - of medicine, and of Christian Art in India. These podcasts highlight how the creative use of audiovisual media can lead to engagements welcoming newer interactions expanding access and forging relationships with audiences, while also telling us about the advent and evolution of different cultures and practices; and offering a glimpse into institutional histories...
This edition of Staying Connected features a project that explores what Qawwali means as a genre in cinema and share from an online archive that showcases and traces its history. The newsletter also brings to you recordings of conversations with artists on IFA implemented projects and grants from the past few months, the new projects implemented by us, open calls for proposals, reports on the impact of the grants and projects implemented by IFA, and our brand new IFA Archive Podcast...
This edition of Staying Connected reflects on a project that worked with collections at one of the historical museums of India, the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata. Looking at paintings from 200 years ago, the project offers a glimpse into the life of ordinary Indians, the perceptions of the colonial artists towards Indian life, and how these works enable us to look at concepts of modernisation and urbanisation today...
Many artistic projects we have implemented in the last few years engage with digital lives, digital memory, archiving the work on a digital medium, or creating an interactive social media form to bring in the larger public. How different are these digital spaces? How do interactions on these platforms change artistic outcomes...
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...
A young girl documents a day in the life of her family in East Kolkata Wetlands. What does she see? Read about a day in the life of Rupsha Mondal, a class 7 student of Kheadaha High School, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, who writes about her father and grandfather, fish breeders in the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW)...
