For research into India’s disparate botanical art traditions, focusing on four colonial botanical texts ranging from the seventeenth-century Hortus Indicus Malabaricus to the nineteenth-century Flora Indica. The research will involve matching the texts with what exists in the gardens, and making visible the unnamed indigenous botanical artists of Company paintings as well as the variations in botanical iconography across diverse print media: engravings, watercolours, and lithographs. This research is part of a larger project to document an Indian botanical ‘Ark-ive’ or a visual genealogy of botanical arts traditions on the printed page. The outcome will be a website.
For analysing the phenomenon of the emergence of satellite television in the 1990s, which was a crucial factor in Kerala’s social life. By exploring the cultural history of the Malayalam satellite channel Asianet, the project attempts to understand how television is instrumental in refashioning the modern political subject in post-colonial contexts. The outcome will be a monograph.
For documenting the complex and conflicted history of the evolution of the Malayalam script in the computer era through the exploration of the Rachana movement in Kerala. Outcomes of the project will include a free and open Malayalam font based on the original script, a website archiving published material related to the language campaign for the original script, and a book printed in this script narrating the history, evolution and present status of the Malayalam Lipi and Unicode language technology.
For researching the development and changes in the Lounda Nach performances in Bihar since the 1990s. The project aims to primarily explore the influence of CD culture and the film and cassette industries on Lounda Nach to understand how the aesthetics of this art form and its engagement with audiences have evolved. The outcome will be a book.
For a film exploring the musical traditions of the Old Town in Ladakh as a representative of life and connections between generations, through oral histories, archival data, investigation of Monastic festivals and interviews with young contemporary musicians.
For research on a community of sculptors who create the popular Swamimalai bronze idols. The project is aimed at understanding how even as a traditional art form is appropriated by governmental institutions, the traditional community both capitalises on and competes with the support these institutions offer. It will further investigate how sculptors negotiate with notions of ‘tradition’, ‘identity’ and ‘commerce’ viewed through the lens of the neoliberal craft industry in India. The outcome of this project will be a monograph-length essay.
For a film exploring the subculture of B-boying and Breaking as an Indian form of contemporary street dance, that will focus on the performers at Khirki village, New Delhi, a volatile melting pot of Jats, Biharis, Nigerians, Afghanis, and struggling artists which is shaping the area’s youth in the unlikeliest of ways.
For exploring the contours of feminist street theatre as a genre, with its specificities and aims, its own language and methods, aesthetics and conceptual underpinnings as an integral part of the Indian women’s movement during the 1980s in Delhi. The outcomes will include a book and a CD.
For facilitating a group of eighth and ninth standard pupils of the Government High School, Kundapur, Dakshina Kannada district, to explore all elements of poetry. The projects aims to draw up a selection of poems from within and outside the curriculum, to be read, de-constructed, analysed and understood. Experts from the field will be invited to help explore the possibility of translating the poems to performance pieces. The production will be showcased in the school for its extended community.
For a series of arts-based interventions to encourage children to heighten their creative writing skills while developing visual sensibilities, leading to the production of a book by the pupils of the Government Higher Primary School, Kannamangala, Chikkaballapur district.
For facilitating a series of workshops on Doddata, a folk performance form of north Karnataka, for the children of the Government High School, Jakanapalli, Gulbarga. They will be conducted by local troupes who will be invited to the school for performances, presentations and discussion on a regular basis to train the children in all aspects of the form such as recitals, acting, costume and property design and stage craft among others. This will lead to a performance and an exhibition by the children for the local community.
For a performance piece based on research into the life of the Malayalam poet Kadamanitta Ramakrishnan Nair, and into the ritual performance form of Kerala called Padayani. Essentially a musical, the performance will also combine elements of theatre and visual arts in creating a multidimensional artistic experience.
For a series of short animation films based on the life and music of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan. The project explores early sound recording technology and the artist's life within that techno-social moment in history. The project will result in animation works and installations that combine archival material with pieces of obsolete technology such as old cameras and gramophone players.
For research, collation and documentation of materials from archives related to the practice of a revolutionary poet who has been an active advocate for a separate state of Telangana. This artistic engagement will be documented through photographs, text, video, and recorded audios of political discourse, conversations and interviews.
For research at the Munshi Aziz Bhat Museum of Central Asian & Kargil Trade Artifacts in Kargil. It will culminate in an exhibition that will open in the Museum in September, 2014. The exhibition will re-present and contextualize the large collection of historical and ethnographic objects in the museum by constructing narratives around these objects, texts and legacies of the people who have traversed these regions.
