For research into the linked histories of the radio, the gramophone and Bengali music in the early twentieth century towards an archive of printed materials, a monograph, and a reader collating and annotating articles from Betar Jagat (1930-1950)––a journal published by Calcutta Radio Station. The project will examine, source and collate print and audio-visual records pertaining to the early history of both media in order to map the evolution of Bengali music of the period.
For research and study of the art and science of daguerreotype photography in order to build and experiment with a daguerreotype camera and work towards a book on the form.Through training and exposure to the international contemporary daguerreotype community, the artist will extend his knowledge of image-making and attempt to expand the domain of Indian art photography.
For research into the life of Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam and the events, characters and art philosophies that led to his untimely death in Japan. The researcher will identify appropriate areas of arts discourse for reading and analysis, and will travel to interview various individuals who have played significant roles in Jangarh Singh Shyam’s life. The research will subsequently provide the basis for a novel.
For conceptualising and producing an installation based on the video documentation of the unique performance language developed in Brhannala, a production by Adishakti, a Pondicherry based theatre group.
For identifying and compiling critical writing on the visual arts published in the twentieth century in various Hindi magazines and journals. This will be followed by a critical evaluation of major twentieth century visual artists. The project will result in a published collection of articles and essays on individual visual artists.
For a series of intensive short-term culture workshops for undergraduate students and other youngsters of the same age group. The objective is to fill a serious vacuum in the formal general education system, which lacks a mechanism to help youngsters appreciate the most significant art works and aesthetic traditions in their immediate environment and open their minds to the rich world of intellectual inquiry.
For the creation of a performance to be developed collaboratively by a dancer and light architect. The artists will explore and experiment with the movement principles of Bharatnatyam and aim to give a new dimension to its spatial and architectural forms through light and image installations.
For the development of a new choreographic work titled The Rhythm Divine—a collaboration between dancer-choreographer and a master of the Pung Cholom form of Manipur, and his team. The artists will try to assimilate each other’s movement styles and then, through an improvisatory sawaal-jawaab process, create a new contemporary ‘stage-scape’ and idiom of dance.
For research into Dastangoi, a sixteenth century performed art of storytelling in Urdu. The artist will explore the form by composing new and experimental dastaans (stories), training more dastangos, and performing in some of the older parts of North India where the form originated.
For the creation of a series of short video-poems, animation sequences of digital paintings, still photographs, collages, and site specific live-action video responding to the changing visual environment of Kolkata and the increasing presence of mass-produced images across the city. The series will be played on the closed-circuit television monitors of the Metro Railway in Kolkata.
For the development of a theatre production titled The Wedding Party which simulates an urban middle-class wedding in order to explore issues of gender, class and sexuality. The audience will be ‘invitees’ to the wedding, positioned to both observe and participate in the proceedings. The ‘fourth wall’ of theatre will be broken by ‘performing’ the play in a non-theatre space like a marriage hall, complete with all the accoutrements of a typical urban wedding.
For the development of a production of Quick Death, a physical play text written by the Australian playwright Richard Murphet. Quick Death is the first of a trilogy of productions through which actors will be prepared to approach physical texts effectively and methods of training developed to facilitate them to become autonomous and interpretative.
For the production of a performance-based show involving fine art, theatre movement, dance, state-of-the-art materials and light design, titled The Pink Balloon. The story is based on a small book of original artwork of sketches, and uses a pink balloon as a metaphor to describe a journey from birth to the final attainment of bliss.
For the production and post-production of two films that will complete the Sikkim trilogy inaugurated with the IFA-supported The Listener’s Tale. Emerging out of the research and production of the first film, these subsequent films will move closer to places and people in an attempt to capture the everyday, which underlies the grand design of Tibetan Buddhism in Sikkim.
For research into and documentation of the Reshma-Chuharmal Nautanki, a popular Dalit folk theatre performance of Bihar. The project will explore how identities, caste and power are contested in and through this performance. Different versions of the Reshma-Chuharmal story, both in its performed and written form, will be collated, transcribed, translated and analysed to understand how they reflect a changing sense of identity among the Dalits.
