Monday, October 21, 2013

MaathuKathe - Wednesday 23rd @ 19.00

MaathuKathe, which in Kannada means 'conversations' is new monthly platform for visiting or Bangalore-based artists, scholars, activists and critics, to perform, make a presentation, or just talk about their work. It is organised by the Indian Foundation of the Arts. The office space is open for talks and stories on the arts.

This session is about the work of the current bangaloREsidents. The Residency programme has been conceived as a long-term collaboration between the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore and various innovative and contemporary art/cultural spaces in Bangalore, with a view to offering German aspirants a space conducive to creative output and the opportunity to work with Indian artists/experts, in the challenging context of Asia's fastest-growing metropolis. The Residencies are designed to involve mutual exchange so that both the visiting Germans and the local community reap the benefit of fresh perspectives and expanding horizons.

Four of our current batch of 9 Residents will participate in IFA's MathuKathe on October 23rd.

Fabian Hesse is a Visual Artist and artist-in-residence at Jaaga.. He is interested in exploring the usage of public space in creating works of art. He prefers to begin his residency in bangalore with an open mind - without a precise idea or plan, merely observing and experiencing cultural exchange and let his reaction, response and involvement produce an artistic work. He is also very interested in internet-related questions including the fundamental changes occurring through information technology and digitalisation.

One of the ways he engages with the process of digitalisation is through 3-D printing using open source software and hardware and this Residency will be a great opportunity for him to develop and share his expertise in this field, identifying avenues for its use here.

Alfons Knogl is a Sculptor and Musician and artist-in-Residence @ 1 Shanthi Road. He is deeply interested in the context and connection of sculpture, furniture, interior design and music as forms of culture. Using the references and meanings of materials like stone and concrete, he builds forms such as tables and expressions of music which can be autonomous on the one hand and socially related on the other. His interest in the bangaloREsidency stems from a residency in Istanbul where he first began to use non-western cultural codices in his sculpture and music. The residency at 1 Shanthi Road, Bangalore affords him an excellent opportunity to be influenced and inspired by a wider variety of these.

Anna Marziano  is a filmmaker  and she intends to examine the issues that concern the construction of contemporary identity, through a film process which questions subjectivity, social roles, multiple singularities and hidden nuances of individual and social bodies. Experimenting with the documentary form, the structure of her films involves gathering fragments of reality (sounds, conversations, images) and transforming them into composition, action and relation. Her projects are often process-based and reveal a participative character, i.e. she proposes public gestures such as readings or questions that may activate social spaces in urban communities.

In Bangalore, she plans to share her experiences, considerations and references with students and artists, over lectures, workshops and gatherings. Another reason for her deep interest in this residency is the preparation of her new project, an essay-film in which archive materials expand/question/support a net of written texts and voice-recordings focusing on the cultural idea of love and family. This open meditation will move through different countries – India, Germany, Italy, France – and through different possibilities and difficulties of composing desire and reality, freedom and responsibility, the one and the many.

Dijana Zoradana Elfadivo, a fashion designer and collage artist, supports the Yuva Chintana Foundation by creating a connection and dialogue with the children about their cultural textile identity. Together, she and the children will research and sketch a textile identity and journey by building informative and creative collage art on or around the body using textiles, costumes, vintage cloth, natural elements, urban elements and traditional symbols and accessories.

People from the textile industry will be invited to share their experiences as part and spirit of the project. With the help of the teachers from the foundation Dijana will give the children an insight into the tradition of Indian textiles and its contemporary variants. At the end of the Residency, the results of the project will be displayed in an exhibition. Dijana would also like to design a pictorial representation of the project and exhibit it in Berlin.

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