Artists Unite

If you’d like to see what a non-religious, non-commercial gathering of people looks like in India, come to Red Fort grounds today and tomorrow. Artists, musicians, dancers, writers, performers, film-makers, architects, students, teachers, cooks, writers, cleaners, and many more have erected their visions of India and the world, to speak against hate crimes, against war mongering, against the unspeakable violence that has gripped India today. The entire collective is self-funded by the people, and open to participation from the community, for everybody. This is democracy in operation right in front of our eyes. #artistsunite #laalquila #againsthatred #fordemocracy

Watchdog Turns Rabid

The only war we need to be waging for India is against mainstream media today. Instead of asking tough questions of the govt., it joyfully becomes its mouthpiece. Instead of reporting with restraint and responsibility, it fuels the flow of fake news with hyperbole and imprecise visuals. Instead of reporting all sides of a story, it shouts down at speakers it does not agree with. Mainstream media in India no longer represents the marginalized, the oppressed, the ones seeking justice, or ones deserving of being heard by society. Media wilfully instigates witch-hunts, engages in hate speech, dramatizes events to the point of gross inaccuracy. It is media that has become unfaithful to everything - it no longer displays loyalty to journalistic ethics, nor is it concerned with the state of the nation. We had all hoped that Privatization gave Media the autonomy to do its job that it struggled to perform under the state’s control. Instead, the market has transformed it into a cheap hawker, peddling anything that sells, so long as they get a bone thrown at them, by the govt., by the corporate, or by the dark evil called Television Rating Points. Media only wants itself to be heard. And it barks into our faces. The watchdog has turned into a rabid dog.

Announcing MASH FICA Award

ANNOUNCING THE RECIPIENT OF THE MASH FICA AWARD: SUPPORTING NEW MEDIA ART PRACTICE 

FICA, in collaboration with MASH, is pleased to announce the Recipient of the first MASH FICA Award 2019, dedicated to supporting artists working in new media: Amitesh Grover.

The announcement was made on February 3 at the India Art Fair 2019, following which an informal session was conducted with the winner by jury member Sabih Ahmed. The open call for the MASH FICA Award 2019 was sent out in late September 2018 and we received applications from all over the country that included independent artists, photographers, designers, filmmakers, and media professionals. The Jury for the MASH FICA Award 2019 consisted of artists Shilpa Gupta and Ranbir Kaleka, Sabih Ahmed, Researcher, Asia Art Archive, Shalini Passi, art patron and Founder, MASH and Vidya Shivadas, Director, FICA. 

The Jury was particularly impressed by the finalist proposals as they reflected each artist’s distinctive commitment towards exploring the broader context and operations of media and mediation today through their art practice.The Jury's selection of four finalists offers an index of the different tendencies opening up in the field of art today that engage with mediatic regimes through performative; research-based; object driven, and interaction-based approaches.

MASH FICA Awardee 2019:

After careful deliberation, the jury awarded Amitesh Grover’s project, titled ‘Missing Bodies | Quantified Self’ as the first MASH FICA Award for 2019. Grover’s project looks at the intimate interaction between body and technology in the age of institutional surveillance. He intends to look at the ‘missing body’ as one subjected to the new demands of profit and efficiency. Submitting his biometric data to ‘intimate technologies’ that trace and monitor his corporeal functions (such as fitbits, heart-rate monitors and GPS equipment), Grover intends to map out an affective regime enabled by contesting ideas of agency. The proposal plays with the boundaries between art, science and capital in using wearable tracking technologies to gauge a simultaneously technical and affective topography of the contemporary workplace. He intends to collate the data collected over the grant period into an exhibition exploring ideas of resistance as it manifests in the labouring body. This includes not only practical interventions in workspaces, but also insights and data collected from tech-engineers, psychoanalysts, medical experts and other professionals engaged in the microeconomics of data-centred anatomical studies.

The project is expected to manifest in different modes including a multi-media installation as well as a live, durational performance, the dramaturgy of which is developed from the data collected during the project. The outcomes of the project shall reflect upon the conditions of the data-industry by counterpointing conditions of value and work with leisure, anti-value, use and uselessness.

We wish him the best to carry out his work through 2019! With Mash Shalini Passi, Vidya Shivadas

Naya/Nova Award

In June this year, we announced the Open Call for NAYA/NOVÉ - the first Indian Playwrights’ Festival to be held as part of Specific 2018, organised by Feste Theatre, Czech Republic. The festival is dedicated to introducing Czech public to new dramatic texts from India. The call met with an overwhelming response; we received nearly three dozen new writings from playwrights spread across the country in several Indian languages including Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, Awadhi, English, as well as in dialects such as Bhojpuri and Dehati Hindi. The writing came in diverse forms - documentary, autobiographical, solo performance scripts, historical drama. Where some plays dealt with revisiting and re-narrativising ideological and mythical narratives, with ideas of displacement, fractured memory and loss, others engaged in critical understanding of nationhood and citizenship, probing deeper into discourses of women’s rights and sexuality, surveillance and institutionalised oppression. After three long months of intensive reading, review and discussion, the panel arrived at a shortlist of 3 play-texts (with an additional script deserving a special mention). We congratulate Abhishek Majumdar, Gerish Khemani, Akshat Nigam, Chanakya Vyas, and Deepika Arwind. We now look forward to translating and organising performance readings of the selected scripts in Czech Republic early next year, for the First Indian Playwrights’ Festival in Prague 2019!! With Sarah Mariam & Jiri Honzirek.

Rangroop Felicitation

Honoured to be felicitated by Rangroop, one of the oldest performing groups in Kolkata, on their semicentennial celebrations. Wish them another 50 years of outstanding ensemble work, and an undying commitment to independent theatre. Was also delighted to share my new work at the seminar chaired by Samik Bandyopadhyay, with stalwarts of theatre Satish Alekar, Neelam Mansingh, Sudhanva Deshpande, and Trina Nileena Banerjee

3D Printing Prototype for an upcoming installation