CEPT has recently become an institutional partner for a symposium at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016 looking at 'Creative Encounters with Science and Technology: Legacies, Imaginaries and Futures'. The symposium will take place on 18 - 19 February 2017 and is an outcome of the research of Teaching Fellow Dr. Joanna Griffin. The biennale this year is curated by artist Sudarshan Shetty, who has had a long association with CEPT University and Ahmedabad. The event will be held in the newly constructed Biennale Pavilion designed by architect Tony Joseph and uses recycled materials to recall structures from the maritime cultures of Kochi. This is in collaboration between Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru; CEPT University, Ahmedabad and Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University, Plymouth. The symposium is a postdoctoral forum and part of the official Biennale programme.
Dr. Griffin has also conducted a Winter School with students from CEPT at the Biennale under the same title; to conduct primary research into the ways artists in the exhibition have used and interpreted science and technology. An open discussion for this took place at Mill Hall, Fort Cochin on 15th December 2016 between the students and invited speakers.
The Biennale has also seen participation from various CEPT Alumni.
On Stage: Sathenagar Here
Alumni Shantanu Poredi (FA, ’88 batch) and Manisha Agarwal (FA, ’90 batch) have been involved in Samooha - an informal, interdisciplinary team of seven, including –
Santosh Thorat & Jameela Begam Eathakula (community leaders from Sathenagar)
Shantanu Poredi, Manisha Agarwal, Anand Patel & Aparajita Basu (practicing architects)
Vyjayanthi Rao Venuturupalli (cultural anthropologist specializing in urban studies)
With artists from Sathenagar, one of Mumbai’s largest ‘informal' communities’, Samooha have created On Stage: Sathenagar Here, an architectural installation for a series of performances, visual and discursive events about the nature of life, work and culture in informal community settings. On Stage recalls experiences of space and creative place making practices encountered in Sathenagar. The focus was on the principles of self-reliance, self-expression and self-making as they find their way into new visions for transforming society.
Samooha has created an interactive installation, reflecting Sathenagar’s spatial conditions and experiences in a by-lane that leads from one of Fort Kochi’s main thoroughfares to the seafront promenade. This installation is animated with audio, video and photographic materials created by residents of Sathenagar to address the world they will encounter at the Biennale. It serves as a stage within the larger stage of the Biennale to explore how one might relocate flows of language, heritage, tradition and practice embedded tacitly in every life into this self-conscious space for exploring creativity. The bamboo frame is an incubator, a mechanism to organize and orchestrate open-ended possibilities for collective engagement created in a material that initiates settlement in informal communities across India.
For more info - https://goo.gl/JkkdZM
happy medium
Alumni Raj Menon (FA, ’95 batch) & Kunjan Garg (FA, ’95 batch) with Niranjan Das Sharma / RGB studio were involved in a collateral project proposed by alumnus Quaid Doongerwala (FA, ’90 batch) / DCOOP and Rajeev Thakker / aRT, studioX.
The project is called -
happy medium: a satisfactory compromise between two things or a course of action or condition that is between two extremes…
‘happy medium’ proposes an intersection between public space, discarded or reusable objects & the events of the biennale. By assembling and re-programming discarded and re-usable objects and assigning them new programmatic functions, the project hopes to foster an experimental engagement between spectators, visitors & locals, exploring how communities interact with their existing context and environment and, in many ways, are forced to interact or participate in the 'new events' of the city, which appear temporarily for the period of the biennale's presence. These new poly-programmed infrastructures, communal in nature, create a series of ‘collaged’ or ‘recycled’ social spaces at various venues of the Biennale where people can meet, gather, relax, ideate, play, nap and enjoy the outdoor activities in Fort Kochi. Besides promoting notions of sustainability, flexibility, recycling and design, the project provokes the viewer to re-imagine how these elements can add alternative value to the way cities are produced and enables art, architecture & design to critically intervene questioning the processes that currently produce our infrastructure and public spaces.
A large proportion of raw materials used for the installation came from the local junk market which forms one of the few means of subsistence for the area. These were put together using minimal interventions from a team of steel fabricators and carpenters. It is located at two places - at the cafe and near the jetty, both at the Aspinwall building and at the David Hall.
For more info - https://goo.gl/8zqDzx
A common patron
CEPT Aluma & Patron Asha Jadeja (FP 1982), the venture capitalist from Silicon Valley who supported CEPT University in setting up the FabLab CEPT, is a Platinum Patron of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Ms. Jadeja supports a number of startups and NGOs across the world through the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation.
