FICA was delighted to collaborate with Serendipity Arts Foundation to present an exhibition of young practitioners, titled
Call to Disorder: Experiments in Practice and Research, at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2019, Goa.
Curator: Vidya Shivadas
Exhibition Dramaturg: Sanchayan Ghosh
Mentors: Babu Eshwar Prasad, C P Krishnapriya and Susanta Mandal
Exhibition Design: Nikhil K C
Assistant Curators: Sukanya Deb & Annalisa Mansukhani
Participating Artists
Ajit Kumar, Akshay Sethi, Akup Buchem, Ankan Dutta, Ankit Ravani, Bhanu Gola, Debasis Beura, Dhrubajit Sarma, Gyanwant Yadav, Khandakar Ohida, Maksud Ali Mondal, Maya D'Costa, Pallavi Arora, Pavithra Ramanujam, Priyank Gothwal, Priyesh Gothwal, Rahul Kamalasan, Ritika Mittal, Ritika Sharma, Rohit Yadav, Sagar Gupta, Sana Bansal, Selvam Palani, Shikha Sreenivas, Shweta Sharma, Tahsin Akhtar, Tanaya Rao Raj, Tehmeena Firdos, Tilottama Bhowmick, Umesh Singh, Utsuk Sharma, V Prabhu, Vikrant Kano, Yogesh Ramakrishna and Zeel Sanghavi
The exhibition developed from the intensive annual courses that FICA and SAF have organised for young artists since 2017. Driven by the need to create a post-academic space where artists can continue learning, collaborating and making, these courses aimed to create spaces of experimentation and study.
Through these mentor-led, and equally peer-driven environments, fugitive methodologies were developed such as exploring the city and their immediate environment as an extended studio, drawing ideas and enquiries from a variety of sources and exploring alternate support structures. The artists engaged with a variety of different practices and themes, investigating different modes of production and dissemination, experimenting with media and materials, and with processes of (un)learning through research and fieldwork.
Setting the tone for this exhibition platform, the “Call to Disorder” as sounded by Fred Moten and Steve Harney, rings through the designated venue - a now defunct Old PWD Complex. When speaking of disorder in their polemical book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Moten and Harney refer to this as the refusal of settlement, disregard for hierarchies and order, and a commitment to unsettling, dissonance (that continues), and the indeterminate.
The exhibition is another learning site continuing our ruminations on practice and pedagogy. Considering site specificities towards ideas of learning environments and informational strongholds, the site of the Old PWD Complex presented us with a provocative setting for the processes of self-reflection and enquiry. The heritage building, which until recently housed the Public Works Department through its various manifestations since 1836, has been a constant presence in the infrastructure of Goa, overseeing construction and maintenance of government buildings, roads and bridges, water supply and drainage schemes, and civil engineering works. It stands in juxtaposition to the dis-ordered, liminal, and expressive engagements that the artists evoke. Regimented and dense with history, this infrastructure became a point of dialogue for the young artists gathered here, to locate alternate archives, imaginaries, subjectivities and modes of practice.
More on the FICA-SAF Collaboration
FICA, in collaboration with SAF, has organised six-week long, intensive courses for young artists since 2017. Located in the SAF New Delhi basement, the three annual courses The Moving Image, Storytellers and On-Site generated intense learning environments for young practitioners. The courses focused on experimentation, working across media, exploring materials, reading, dialogue and research. Artist-led and peer-learning driven, they attempted to create a supportive collective environment for the creative practitioners as they embark on their practices. The courses have also been rich experiences in terms of building curricula from the inputs of practicing artists who have mentored the participants with explorations of ideas, techniques and media.
