For working with the audio-archives at the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies (ARCE), Gurgaon. The ARCE is an extraordinary audiovisual archive that houses more than 25,000 hours of recordings, and includes all contexts of music production, such as recorded Indian music, dance, and performance of all kinds, from classical music traditions to regional traditions from all over India, popular music from film music, to Jazz in India. Shubhasree’s research engages with ‘work music’ practices in India, which is scattered across genres like agricultural songs, boatman’s songs, grinding songs, and more, to construct a framework into which these genres can be categorised, and explored.
For working with the audio-archives at the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies (ARCE), Gurgaon. The ARCE is an extraordinary audiovisual archive that houses more than 25,000 hours of recordings, and includes all contexts of music production, such as recorded Indian music, dance, and performance of all kinds, from classical music traditions to regional traditions from all over India, popular music from film music, to Jazz in India. Priya Sen a filmmaker and researcher, will investigate the narratives, and conversations around oceanic routes, especially, the music of the Siddhis in Gujarat, and the music of the indentured populations from East India and UP, who migrated to Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad.
For research to study the construction of identity by representation through photographic images. The project will focus on the photographs of the Konyak Nagas by ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, that is responsible for creating the archetypal Naga stereotype. The outcome of this research will be an exhibition.
For examining the ways in which modern forms of storytelling such as animation and the graphic novel and their traditional counterparts in the folk and tribal arts, are turning to each other for new modes of expressions, subjects, and audiences to expand their practices. The researcher will focus on the works of the Chitrakar community of Medinipur, West Bengal and the Pradhan Gonds of Madhya Pradesh; and also study recent collaborations between graphic novelists and folk artists. The outcome of this project will be a monograph.
For research on press photography as an emerging artistic practice in Kashmir. He will work with a remarkable generation of contemporary photojournalists, in an excavation of this cultural phenomenon, as it chronicles twenty-five years of endemic conflict in the valley.
For a graphic narrative and a series of performances, on the untold stories of migrant labourers and their tools, as they transform the history of the city of Delhi. These stories provide perspectives from those who have come from the outside to make this city their home, as the city grows in shape and size. A prototype of the graphic novel, performances and their documentation will be produced as outcomes.
For a puppetry workshop, over eighteen days, for eight participants from diverse artistic backgrounds, with a traditional master Kathputli practitioner from Rajasthan – Puran Bhatt. The third in a series of IFA funded workshops, this is another step towards addressing the need for building a robust discourse and pedagogy for puppetry in India, through intensive training, discussions and artistic exchanges, between traditional and contemporary puppeteers and other arts practitioners who draw from puppetry in form, content or aesthetics.
For research into the production and distribution of Ashiqa, an illuminated manuscript from the time of the Mughal emperor, Akbar. This study of the material aspects of the manuscript is expected to yield important new insights into the polity, economy and culture of the Mughal era. The research will result in a Power Point presentation documenting the Mughal manuscript industry and the Imperial library, and a book on manuscriptology.
For working with the cultural history archive at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC) which contains a wide variety of visual materials from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal that includes books, journals, popular paintings, prints, posters, hoardings, advertisements and commercial art productions. Vishwajyoti will visually reinterpret some of the moral science textbooks from nineteenth-century India with the visuals and popular iconography of that era to form a new body of work.
For engaging with the Decorative Arts Department of the National Museum, New Delhi for re-staging their collection of brocade saris to make the museum a dynamic space for both research and practice. Suchitra and Abeer’s project aims to ascertain the pedagogic and public value of our national cultural resources through research and exhibition, thus establishing a live link between the collection, the classroom and the exhibition that will be curated at the National Museum in February 2016.
