The FICA Reading Room invites Torchlight, an online journal, to inhabit Project_Space through September and October 2019, and make their compelling case for libraries and books. Looking at the world through a readerly lens, Torchlight is a multi-media project that celebrates the pleasures of reading and the ways in which the many forms of the written word allow one to grow, learn and embrace new experiences.

Through this collaboration, FICA and Torchlight look forward to engaging with individuals and other initiatives working with books and libraries, and with writers and readers as well - inviting responses, reflections and conversation. Across its 10 issues, the journal has brought together a wide variety of thought on the relationships we forge with books and spaces of reading, while also exploring the manner in which the way we read has evolved with changes in form and technology.

Torchlight Journal @ Project_Space is a showcase of their archive of essays, poetry, comics, art and inventions, through an interactive display, performances, interventions, workshops and more.

Film screening | Tuesday, 1st October 2019 | 6 PM 
Fahrenheit 451, dir. François Truffaut (1966) 
112 minutes

FICA is pleased to invite you to Film Night @ FICA Reading Room, as part of Torchlight Journal @ Project_Space.

About the film:
Set in a dystopian future, an authoritarian government employs the burning of all literature. to curb revolution and free thought in society.

Performance | 4 October 2019 | 6:30 pm
Yours, Mine, and Ours: a dramatised reading 
by Third Space Collective 

Third Space Collective in collaboration with FICA and Torchlight Journal present Yours, Mine and Ours: a dramatised reading.

Sometimes daunting, sometimes inviting, sometimes standoffish and aloof, sometimes a necessity and sometimes a realm of infinite worlds, a library has always meant different things for different
people.
But within those large walls and dog-eared pages, enveloped in an austere and pinprick silence, rests a community of readers.
These are readers you may never talk to, may never even notice, and yet will share an intimate bond with—a mutual love for the written word.
Through this performance, then, we wish to ponder over what a space like a public library truly represents—the ultimate frontier of readership? A haven for bibliophiles?—by throwing light on the
community that resides within it. The huge cast of characters it welcomes and what libraries has meant for each one of them.
How words have moulded them, shaped them, transformed them.

Devised and performed by:
Abhishek Basak
Naveen Sharma
Noel Sengupta
Shreya Agarwal

Interactive session | 15 October 2019 | 5 pm
Exploring Book Forms with Sherna Dastur

Sherna Dastur is many things – filmmaker, paper maker, book maker.

Her work includes published as well as handmade books.
Some of her published works are 'Rehearsing Freedom: The Story of a Theatre in Palestine' (Leftword Books); 'At Home in the World: The Art and Life of Gulammohammed Sheikh'; ‘Project CinemaCity and Trace Retrace: Paintings, Nilima Sheikh' (Tulika Books); 'The Khoj Book' (Harper Collins).

In this interactive session, she will be sharing her practice that engages with content, form and material to create unique books. She will be presenting on her work, and projects she has undertaken. The books will also be available to look through and study, in this wonderful opportunity. This session will be addressing an intersection of practices that relates to artists, makers, writers, designers, and more.