The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, in collaboration with Serendipity Arts Foundation, invited applications from young artists for a five-week course, titled The Moving Image: A Course exploring Light, Movement and Narrative
Duration: September 11 – October 13, 2017
Educators and Modules:
Susanta Mandal | Movement and Pause
Chandan Gomes | Working from Memory
Babu Eshwar Prasad | Seeing Sounds and Hearing Images
Course Facilitator: Lokesh Khodke
Participants: Samrridhi Kukreja, Debasis Beura, Tehmeena Firdos, Utsuk Sharma, Vinati Sehgal, Sagar Gupta, Bhanu Gola, Ritika Mittal, Ritika Sharma, Ajit Kumar, Ponraj Kumar, Akup Buchem, Priyank Gothwal and Pallavi Arora.
The proposed, full-time course was designed as 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. The format was structured for young artists looking to closely engage with experienced practitioners and explore diverse mediums and materials. With a particular focus on light, movement and narrative, the Moving Image course opened up possibilities of conceptualising and making through the process of research, reading, experimenting with mediums, collaboration and exchange. Each module was outlined keeping in mind the specialised 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 mentors for the course - Susanta Mandal, Chandan Gomes and Babu Eshwar Prasad - took week-long modules on kinetic art, photography, video and sound work respectively. Assisted by Course Facilitator Lokesh Khodke, the inputs they provided enabled a balanced exchange of ideas amongst all involved.
To know more about the modules and the educators, click here.
Other additional inputs included a session on sound art with Ish S, a two-day module on light as material with Manav Bhargava, and an orientation in ethnography and fieldwork by Sarover Zaidi. The course also included presentations by senior artists like Ranbir Kaleka and Sonia Khurana, and choreographer Mandeep Raikhy, as well as a session with Prof. Davinder Singh of BML Munjal University on Art and Entrepreneurship.
The concept for this course was not just to explore the technical skills devised by the respective mentors/artists but also to engage with the larger conceptual questions of how movement, light and narrative get manifested, along with the ways in which they have been re-framed and questioned time and again in the society around us. We sought applications from young artists who could devote uninterrupted time for participation in this course. Given the duration, we preferred people who are not presently enrolled in any undergraduate or postgraduate programmes.
Open Day
Following the modules, the participants had ten days to work on the artworks they intended to materialise for an Open Day which was conceived of as a culminating outcome of the course. Over the fortnight, they gathered materials for their work and engaged with the architectonics of the space to carve out display areas for their exhibits, structuring conscious interactions with their surroundings.
The two-week display period starting with the Open Day on October 14 lasted until October 27, and brought forward inventive moving sculptures, videos, sounds and photo-books, functioning as formative proposals and experiments highlighting the interplay of sound, light, movement and image. The studio space was turned into a work-in-progress that was shared with visitors, leading audiences through a series of encounters with the works on display. The exhibition activated all or any of the sessions attended by the participants, and it gave us a glimpse of the inquiries each of them would engage with in the coming years.
For Serendipity Arts Foundation and FICA, the course was an invaluable experience in terms of building a curriculum from the inputs of practicing artists and to provide the group of young practitioners a chance to explore ideas, techniques and mediums that they would have not had access to within the formal art college programmes. It was a very rich set of inputs for the group, supporting them in their journeys towards setting up their independent practices.
For further insight into the course, visit The Moving Image blog or access the course booklet here.