Space 340

The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), in collaboration with Serendipity Arts Foundation, organized a month long course, titled ‘The Moving Image: A Course Exploring Light, Movement and Narrative’ that ran from September 11 to October 13, 2017, culminating in an Open Display of the resulting artworks on October 14 that continued till October 27, 2017.

The Moving Image Course was an extension of the Master Class series conducted by FICA in 2015 and the workshop experiments through 2016 with art students which were carried out by the curatorial team as part of the Students’ Biennale 2016, Kochi. We were keen to extend these workshop formats into a longer month-long process where young artists could immerse themselves in a productive learning environment.

The Moving Image course gave recent art graduates the chance to engage with experienced practitioners and explore diverse mediums and materials to supplement their individual bodies of practice. With a particular focus on light, movement and narrative, the course attempted to open up areas of enquiry to enable a sustained interest in research, reading and experimentation with mediums alongside fostering a spirit of collaboration and exchange. Each module was designed around the specialized practice of the artist/mentor so the participants could benefit from inputs of a specific nature that could potentially act as triggers for their own practice.

The students were given an insight into how artists turn to the city as studio, mining various resources and individuals, and forming their own support structures. The emphasis of the course, through all the modules, remained essentially on a practice oriented approach, which was realized through exercises carried out by the participants themselves, aided by the mentors.

With this course, we hoped outcome was to move towards a more sustained engagement to propose alternate curricula that account for the shifts in contemporary art practices and also support young artists in their journeys towards setting up their independent practices. This further tied up with Serendipity Art Foundation’s vision to encourage and initiate programmes for artistic innovations to provide the wider public with a unique interdisciplinary experience of the arts. For FICA and SAF therefore, this was an ideal opportunity for a creative collaboration.