FICA is pleased to announce our second Reading Module led by Dr Sarada Natarajan, that will look at the ways in which we read and relate to the natural environment. Spotlighting the works of Tim Ingold and Donna Haraway, the Module will look at keywords and concepts, and will encourage a mode of critical thinking that pushes against the grain while drawing on our immediate experiences of our surroundings.
Dates: 16 - 18 December 2021
Days: Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Time: 6 - 8 PM (Thursday and Friday) | 11 AM - 1 PM (Saturday)
Extended deadline: 12 December 2021
Eligibility:
All are welcome to apply. There are no prerequisites for applying to participate as readers.
Application materials:
To allow a more vibrant and wide-ranging group of readers to assemble, we invite readers to demonstrate their interest in the Module by choosing to send us a glimpse of whatever they may wish to share - examples of their writing, artistic practice and/or any other related pursuits - that might demonstrate their interest in the module and connect/contribute to the themes in question.
As part of your application, please write to us at info@ficart.org with a very short introduction of yourself, along with samples of your work as mentioned above.
About the module:
In this Reading Module, we will attempt to destabilize conventional modes of ordering and relating to the natural environment around us from a posthumanist perspective. We will discuss walking, making, being, knowing, matter, meaning, nature, culture, anthropomorphism, ‘natural resources’ and Tim Ingold’s use of meshwork. Each session within this module is conceptualized as a self-contained unit of critical thinking against the grain, delving into the works of contemporary scholars like Tim Ingold and Donna Haraway, borrowing alternative perspectives from marginalized cultures, historical artefacts, and from our own unorthodox experiences of interacting with the world around us.
The Reading Modules exemplify FICA's interest in sustaining and shaping acts of reading as critical, discursive, intimate and subversive; they will also include a prolonged, dedicated focus on chosen themes, permitting more thorough explorations over a period of time. We are also keen to experiment with devising syllabi as blueprints that might develop across different Modules, and to further consider modes of disseminating the same. Through the FICA Reading Modules, we hope to look at the practice of reading as spilling out beyond the dimensions of textual into more processual and dynamic interactions that are non-hierarchical, dialogic, organic, intuitive and affective.
About the resource person:
Sarada Natarajan is an art historian, illustrator, and wildlife enthusiast. She taught art history and theory at various institutions in India for fourteen years, including the University of Hyderabad, Shiv Nadar University, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, and Ashoka University. She is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Art History and the Arts at Krea University, Sri City. Sarada completed her doctorate in art history from the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara and did a stint as Postdoctoral Fellow of Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices at the Humboldt University, Berlin, from 2016 to 2017. She has mentored young curators and artists for three successive Students’ Biennales at Kochi. A trained Carnatic vocalist, Sarada experiments with music and movement for theatre and illustrates for children.
Image Credit: Red Acorn, Woodcut print, Bryan Nash Gill (2013)