Annual report 2003-2004 - India Foundation for the Arts

. . . the tightly choreographed scenes, the breathless pacing, the highpitchedchanting and the incredible noise and decibel levels that theactors are able to achieve . . . is a form that is clearly best suited to thedrama of the street, where there is no possibility of a captive audienceand where onlookers will necessarily leave if the performance doesn’tgrab their immediate attention.From Lalit Vachani’s proposal (2003) to produce a film on the street theatre group Jana Natya Manch (Janam).Photographs courtesy Janam.Another seed grant had been awarded tovisual artist Vasudha Thozhur to work withactivist/writer Bina Srinivasan to produce artworksthat contribute to a secular response tothe Gujarat riots. Because of the exigencies of‘the emergency situation’, however, the collaboratorswere continuously being called upon toundertake different chores, each relevant andjustifiable in its context. And while NGOsshowed interest in organising art workshops,they felt constrained to give priority to ‘farmore important’ issues. As a result, the collaboratorswere rarely able to accomplish theactivities as planned and could not arrive at ashared understanding of their respective rolesand responsibilities in the project.Nevertheless the grant enabled Vasudha toclarify how as an artist she might relevantlyengage with the work of civil society organisations.It also led her to make valuable attemptsto create a visual language that would addresschronic and urgent social concerns. She hasnow sought support to collaborate withHimmat, an NGO working with women survivorsof the Gujarat riots. Her plan is to conduct aseries of art workshop with a group of fivewomen, exploring notions of colour, compositionand form, using both conventional mediaand found materials, and also enabling thewomen to produce narrative works that recordtheir own stories. However, while the work sheproposes to undertake with the women wouldprovide valuable pointers for contemporary artpractice, we felt that it could not properly becalled collaborative in character. IFA is thereforeconsidering the possibility of making aspecial grant to support this project.The collaboration between photographerManas Bhattacharya, graphic designer ArjunDutta, and painter Debashis Sarkar to developa body of new digital artwork has been progressingat a frenetic pace. Two new collaboratorshave joined the team—Subhadeep Ghosh,a computer engineer turned film editor, andDipayan Sarkar, a self-taught painter. They havealready produced more than 400 images. Therandomness that characterised their work inthe early stages still remains a problem, thoughthey claim that their excitement about thepossibilities of the digital media has abated11