Foundation Initiatives

Session I – Counting the Contemporary
Practices within the field of visual art, which include the moving image, have restructured the field ever since the overwhelming expansion of media practices through the digital revolution. The session is a way of asking specific media practitioners and pedagogues to discuss the ways in which they create terms of reference for the vernacular, for marginalised practices and histories and how they have changed research and teaching practices and study. Does our field of enquiry need to be further broadened? Can expanding social histories be part of this transition in media and if so, how?
Moderator – Rahaab Allana
Panelists – Dr. Annapurna Garimella, Anusha Yadav, Abhishek Hazra

Artist Presentation
Karan Shrestha

Session II – Crosscurrents
Visual arts practices have always been concurrent with the written word as well as other inter-media forms. In the visual arts, the move towards archives and collections, the development of social media platforms, the need to use experimental formats and found material all create ways in which the ‘local’ has been articulated and framed. At the same time, writing and exhibitionary forms too have expanded through works in translation, through a focus on new practices and how they enter various fields of curation. The session then speaks to practitioners across arts fields to think about ways in which they have created shifts in practice by reference to elided, fading forms of representation. Can interdisciplinary mandates change how these practices are viewed?
Moderator – Dr. Sabeena Gadihoke
Panelists – Diwas Raja, Dr. Kaiwan Mehta, Abhay Sardesai

Session III – Art and the Everyday
Personal narratives and the documentation of daily life remains a focus in many teaching courses, as ‘little’ histories have become characteristic of photo work in the past five decades. Most recently, the steady growth of popular viewing cultures and the infinite expansion of digital simulacra in all areas of life continue to saturate our eyes and minds via mass replication, manipulation and distribution. All these practices and outputs find place in pedagogical syllabi, as well as in exhibitionary modes through events at cultural institutes, through workshops and seminars, and via international biennales. Are these directions satisfactory enough for arts fields to become more inclusive; and how have the concepts of personal history and domesticity been transformed by them?
Moderator – Ram Rahman
Panelists – Sukanya Ghosh, Hanif Kureshi, Girish Shahane

Session IV – Reframed Futures
The linked issues of location, geography, and cultural specificity that so powerfully influence the grammar of image-making today are at the core of a fraught debate about image hierarchies and the historical privileging of certain visual typologies. ‘Location’ as a key variable in practice is heavily problematised as we negotiate spaces in which art can be harboured. Regional and community imperatives in current image discourses, therefore need attention. How have these played out in terms of museums, archaeological sites, galleries, and other festivals in the postcolonial South – examples of which can be contemporary or historical?
Moderator – Dr. Savia Viegas
Panelists – Naman P. Ahuja, Riyas Komu, Massoud Hossaini

Artist Presentation
Mohan S. Rao