Annual Report 2005-2006 - India Foundation for the Arts

EXTENDING ARTS PRACTICEGroundbreaking achievements in the artsoften occur unexpectedly. Amrita Sher-Gil’spaintings, Salman Rushdie’s novels or UdayShankar’s vision of modern dance, were not bornin a vacuum but neither were they the result ofconscious nurturing on anyone’s part. So while itis difficult to anticipate radical ideas in the arts, itis entirely possible to encourage the developmentof a milieu that is hospitable to such ideas.This is the intention behind our ExtendingArts Practice programme. It was launched in July2005 to support the innovative, the untried andthe fresh in the practice of the arts. At the sametime, we do not want to make a fetish of the new:artists may be searching for another direction fortheir art even if they are not seeking to produceself-professedly experimental work. In a culturethat is not generally encouraging of the exploratoryand the open-ended, our primary aim is to giveartists the confidence to try out new ideas and lookfor fresh ways in which to express themselves.The four grants we have made so far allinvolve a kind of creative re-ordering of theprevalent terms of practice in different fields.Equally the artists we have supported wish toconnect their practice with specific cultural historiesor with aspects of contemporary society.The variety evident even in this small list pointsto the range of viewpoints and approaches thatthis programme can accommodate.At one end of this spectrum, we have amedia artist like Ashok Sukumaran whose artworkschallenge our unquestioning use of technologyin a culture of passive consumption,while also extending the field of media art itself.At the other end is the filmmaker KamalSwaroop, who too is extending our understandingof filmmaking by engaging with students offilm and related disciplines. In this way he ishighlighting issues not just relevant to filmmaking(and its forgotten connection with literature,photography and painting), but also toarts education.In time we intend to organise meetings andseminars on themes relevant to the programme––like interdisciplinarity in the arts or the valueof artistic innovation. These would have thetwin functions of alerting us to interesting workbeing done in the arts, while helping to stimulatediscussion on approaches to arts practicethat we feel ought to have greater currency.GRANTSKamal Swaroop, MumbaiRs 2,27,500 over three monthsTowards identifying partner institutions,developing course books and film study capsules,and fixing a time schedule for a series ofworkshops to be conducted for students of film,design and creative writing. The eventual workshopswill lead to the creation of a story-boardon the life of the pioneering filmmaker,Dadasaheb Phalke. By bringing together studentsof these various disciplines, the workshopswill explore ‘the industrial mode of production’in cinema––something which Phalke exemplifiedand which the current specialisation in thearts no longer allows for.Bodhaditya Bandopadhyay, Kolkata3From Kamal Swaroop’s manuscript, The Life and Times ofDadasaheb Phalke. See also pages 5 and 20-24.