For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA that will develop a comparative history of listening cultures in Maharashtra and Bengal, demonstrating how music circulated through performers, audiences, institutions, print, recording and broadcasting. Titled Listening Across Space: Sound and Memory in Maharashtra and Bengal, the project will foreground listening as a social, cultural, and historical practice. The outcomes of this project will be a research article on listening cultures in Maharashtra and Bengal; an annotated digital bibliography and research guide on archival sources relating to Indian listening cultures; a digital exhibition; public lectures and an educational toolkit introducing broader audiences to India's archival histories of listening. The Project Coordinator’s final deliverables to IFA will include the research article, annotated digital bibliography and research guide, a curated digital exhibition, and an educational toolkit and documentation from the public programming. This is a collaboration with Dr Ashok Da Ranade Archives in Pune, Maharashtra. The Project funds will pay for travel and living, contract fees, workshop, archive and museum fee, publicity and marketing, subscription to software, and website hosting.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations that will examine the intersections of the mudras (hand gestures) in Odissi dance, and the Indian Sign Language (ISL) for the deaf, as a way of developing a deeper understanding of the relationship between classical dance, gesture, rhythm and embodied communication. The outcome of the project will be artistic collaboration between an Odissi dancer, deaf children, and an ISL interpreter, leading to a set of choreographic scores. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final report will be audio-visual documentation of the artistic process. Project funds will pay for the contract fees, documentation, travel and living, consumables, materials and stationery, purchase of books, and printing.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations that will make a history card game that will explore the political, cultural, and social evolution of Tamil history from the Sangam Era to the Dravidian Movement, with illustrated cards created by contemporary Tamil artists and designers. The outcome of the project will be a card game that encourages the players to engage deeper with Tamil history. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be 100 card illustrations of historical events, and the game rule book and box art. Project funds will pay for contract fees, printing, and travel and living.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations that will involve the making of a site-responsive artistic exploration with the fading design archives of the artist’s father, in their ancestral house in Big Bazar, North Kolkata. Through drawing, textile, moving image, projection, voice, found objects, it explores how a private family archive can become a public enquiry into memory, inheritance, and Kolkata’s fading visual culture of the 1960s. The outcome of the project will be a site-specific installation, including a series of graphic drawings, a series of moving images, a digital archive, and a public gathering. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final report will be the visual documentation of the artistic process. Project funds will pay for materials, documentation, printing, oroduction, travel and living, contract fees, and consumables.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Explorations that will include the making of anthotype prints (using light-sensitive plant pigments) from medicinal plants gathered from Thurga River, Ajodhya Hills, Purulia, towards the making of a bilingual Santali-Bengali/English zine of anthotype prints. The outcome of the project will be a series of anthotype prints made from medicinal plants gathered along the Thurga River, as a fading archive and a bilingual zine. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a bilingual Santali-Bengali/English zine of the anthotype prints. Project funds will pay for contract fees, travel and living, publication, printing, workshop and materials.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA that will explore how Indian women conservation architects in India are reshaping conservation practices at a moment when digital technologies are increasingly mediating the preservation of the past. This project through site-based fieldwork and interviews will research how practitioners negotiate between material restoration and digital interventions. The outcomes of this project will be a corpus of oral histories along with a series of exhibitions as part of the research method and a scholarly article/research paper will be published in a reputed journal, contributing to the scholarship on feminist architectural historiography. The Project Coordinator’s final deliverables to IFA, along with the manuscript of scholarly article/research paper will be the oral history interviews and audio-visual materials and research findings from the exhibitions. This is a collaboration with the Women of Vaastukala Archive, an online oral history archive. The Project funds will pay for production, contract fees, travel and living consumables, and hire of equipment.
For the implementation of a Foundation Project by IFA under Seminars that seeks to hold long form conversations with poets, filmmakers, and digital content creators who work in Kamrupi, a non-standardised variant of Assamese language. These poets, filmmakers and creators use Kamrupi as an independent language or form of expression, without foregrounding its identity merely as a dialect. This is important because the language has historically been used in films and other forms of cultural and literary production largely for comic effect. The proposed seminar will be the first-ever attempt to bring some of the artists, creators together under a common umbrella as practitioners who have used, or continue to use, Kamrupi in their serious creative work. The Seminar will bring people together who work in this language under one roof and initiate a conversation around their practices. Project funds will pay for contract fees, travel and living, hire of venue, printing and stationery.
