kipaf13 : some works glimpse

Tapati C and Shremoy Roy C at Gamaga ghat 

Atom Collective From National Libary to Academy of Fine Arts

Collaborative work during Kipaf initiated by Amitava A

Kala Bhavan Student's work during Kipaf at National library,Kolkata

Inder Salim with Pradip C. in Front of Academy Of Fine Arts

26th Jan during republic day parade marches 

Inder Salim with Pradip C. in Front of Academy Of Fine Arts 

Samudra Kajal Saikia in Kipaf13

collaboration between Chimuk , Milton B. and Samudra Kajal Saikia

at Goverment Collage of Art . year -2013

Afsana Sharmin Zuma from Bangladesh at National library,Kolkata

Additions to the Curatorial note

This Side Up, performance by Amarjit Bormudoi during the hokkorob protest march

Performers independent and the Kolkata International Performance Art Festival have been aiming to engage with and open up the city as a site and as a carrier of political contestations. This avant-garde dream has been superseded by the recent developments in Kolkata, the burst of #hokkolorob.  Hokkolorob, a student movement, emerged from a college campus and spread across the city, finding connections across age, class, gender and political positions. What makes #hokkolorob exciting for us is the new language of protest and performativity it offers. The movement has em(de)ployed forms, performative gestures and occupied spaces that have redefined and expanded the notions of contestation and creative possibilities in this metropolis.

KIPAF 15 is (suddenly) poised in this post avant-garde moment. It no longer is the spearhead of exploration, but an extender, reinforcer and a recycler of memories and moments. We feel an acknowledgment of #hokkolorob, its resistance to gender violence and its metaphoric echoes is crucial to situate art and performativity in this city and our contemporarity.

We share this note with our fellow artists to bring about dialogues and responses.

Get lost

Rahul Bhattacharya
on behalf of
KIPAF team

FINAL LIST OF ARTISTS & OBSERVERS IN KIPAF2015

Pi INVITES OTHER INTERESTED ARTISTS AND FRIENDS TO KOLKATA DURING KIPAF15 (23rd-26thJANUARY,2015)WE ARE SORRY THAT WE CANNOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LOGISTICS AS OUR RESOURCES ARE LIMITED.

FINAL LIST OF ARTISTS IN KIPAF2015

 

                                                              
                                                                 poster

KIPAF 15- Press Release

Pi (Performers Independent) Presents

Kolkata International Performance Art Festival (KIPAF), 2015

KIPAF(Kolkata International Performance Art Festival) is an annual event organized by Performers independent (Pi). The festival was initiated in 2012 to annually open up the city of Kolkata to diverse traditions of performance and interventions. The festival aims to be a platform for dialogue between site, art, politics and culture. KIPAF acknowledges the nascent nature of Performance Art in India, and will always play a role in the pedagogy of performance art. KIPAF 13 and 14 have got participation from artist Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Japan, Israel, Belgium & various parts of India. The Festival happens every year from 23rd to 26th January.

With the recognition of political differences, the spaces of and for contestations grow that provokes cultural articulations. Space as a site, stage and location is imploding with the potential to contradict and contest the established power relations and cultural desires. Performance art aids us to intervene in those socio-cultural desires and make evident the possible alternative modes of thinking and being, where being is a condition of constant formation. The KIPAF 2015 thus focused on the thematic "Contesting Spaces".

Figuratively, the city of Kolkata today stands between an aspiration for neo liberal future—to be a global city, and an imagination which revolts against the idea, along with anxiety about the widespread violence that would ensue. Available political discourses represent this moment of flux to make a case in favor of or against development.  KIPAF see this  ‘tussle’ as living proof  of the politically conscious, represented in their mundane expressions of resistance, as the city seeks to live up to another surge of global modernism. One of the sites for widely experiencing this politically rich content is Kolkata's street culture.

Developing an alternate mode of fundraising, Performers Independent did extensive (over 30) street paintings all over the city interacting and raising funds from the citizens.

There was a 3 day workshop initiated by Murari Cheerot , in which artists from the city participated, along with visiting international artists.

This year there are students from KAlA Bhavan Shantiniketan, Fine Arts College Surat, Kashhmir Art College travelling to Kolkata, as observers and participants of the Open Secton. KIPAF 15 is shaping up as a never before event in the history of Indian Art.

Kipaf15 will take place at the following venues

1. College Square complex

2. Nandan-Akademy of fine arts complex

3. Theater For Experiments in New Technologies (Near Deshapriya Park)

4. Various other public places in the city

 Last Year we did a ‘Children Art Exhibition’ at Chitrakoot Art Gallery in the month of March. This year we propose to do a seminar on directions in Performative Practices in Contemporary India .

KIPAF 15 has artists from Australia , Switzerland, Dominican Republic , United States of America, Bangladesh, Japan, Italy and various parts of India. 

KIPAF is presented by Performers independent (Pi), which is an independent artists' collective active from 2011, experimenting and exploring the traditional, modernist and contemporary spaces in the cultural paradigm.

Please find the Tentative and Final Schedule of KIPAF 15 below

Performers independent

Presents KIPAF

KIPAF 2015


TENTATIVE  and  Final SCHEDULE
23^rd to 26^th January

·          DAY -1

 23 JANUARY 2015 

·         
FIRST MEET 11AM VICTORIA MEMORIAL BACK GATE  (PG SIDE)

• ·         LUNCH @ PROSENJIT’S(IN FRONT OF ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS)(SITE)
• ·         WALK TO B.B.D.BAG TRAM DEPOT
• ·         TRAM RIDE TO COLLEGE STREET-COLLEGE SQUARE(SITE)

·         DISPERSE

·          DAY-2

24 JANUARY 2015 

• ·         AFTER LUNCH MEET  & OPEN PERFORMANCE SESSION
• ·         4PM @PROSENJIT’S(IN FRONT OF ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS)(SITE)
• ·         DISPERSE

·          DAY-3(FINAL PERFORMANCE  DAY1)

 25 JANUARY 2015 

• ·         MORNING- NANDAN-ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS AREA
• ·         LUNCH @ PROSENJIT’S(IN FRONT OF ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS)(SITE)
• ·         METRO TO COLLEGE STREET
• ·         POST LUNCH SESSION
• ·         COLLEGE STREET AND COLLEGE SQUARE AREA

     DAY-4(FINAL PERFORMANCE DAY2)

 26 JANUARY 2015 

• MORNING TILL THE END -         TENT (THEATER FOR EXPERIMENTS IN NEW TECHNOLOGIES). Four Bipin Pal Roard.  Lansdown Deshapriya Park Crossing

CONTACT NUMBERS 

09163241238(Taufik riaz)/09836765564(Uma)/09836352770(Chimuk)

(FOR FURTHER INFO CONTACT AT kipaf2013@gmail.com)

KIPAF 2015 - Day -0

One day before we start. After loitering around college street, we occupied the Academy of Fine Arts Courtyard.
There was a team meeting, Prakash and Drorthea wen off the see/map the Victoria Memorial.
Then we just hun around, had lots of exchange and fun .

Prakash, Hemant , Aopala, Uma, Pavi, Rituporna, Suman , Mojo, Sunjukta, Rahul, Pabitro, Anirban , Tubai,Fanscesca. Dorothea, Di Ball, Monica, Sunama, Pavi, SU Man, Chi Muk and many more

Murali Cheeroth's workshop

The KIPAF – 15 is prefaced by a three day performance art workshop by Murali Cheeroth that started

from 19th January. One of the basic activities of the workshop involved breathing exercises that would

open a way to understand our bodies and their potential to transform the performance space. It was an

experience of self-rediscovery for most of us. Another aspect of the workshop was the sound that could

be produced through breathing. In this process the bodies were attempted to be opened inside out.

Producing sound scape inspired from or referred to personal memory and its relation with history, the

historicity of the language of articulating such sound was an exercise that created a sublime feel to the

space. Another sublime experience is the stretching exercise that also involved producing sound through

breathing. We as bodies lay down on the floor and stretched and pulled each other’s bodies holding

hands. It looked as if it was a whole, organic form, comprised of multiple breathing bodies. The

workshop has warmed up the momentum to the festival and a bright hope to experience an energy that

would resonate with the unopened thought and spaces and bring them to articulation.

"In the three days time span,murali da engaged the pi members into the very fundamental phenomena and the reflection upon the unstructured nature of performance art.The question of the presentation of the body and its intervention with the space,the moment up to where the body rippels imense energy and compassion. Gathering at one of our friends house on the first day,murali da was keen to mold us into our discoverd self of being, a being which helps know one self,knowing even against the will of others and hence reopening of self.a constant focus on the way we release and redirect our body against the distraction of a foriegn gaze.an intervention of our ownselves.but it doesnot end here.it further demands of those intervening selves to become into a singular structure at the same time space and dimension.where bodies forget there egoistic identity,the mind relates with one another and become a strongly created conception(the bodies) which is free of inhibition,yet intimately sensitive to touch,smell, breathe,audibility and unbounded imagination. the given or the found space becomesthe sight of imagination. with slower and then unanimous claps murali da formed a place of compassion,where every body stood in a circle primarily and slowly started moving ,balancing the space and the distance of the bodies and the gaze. our bound,rustic,steep bodies slowly found its way in the array of movement and audibility.a result of the collaborating bodies. while talking about space,it must be said that at some point we faced a limitation when on the second day we found a proposed venue for our workshop.we were gradually told to lower our pitches and hence kind of creating a subduetion.but not to worry my friends,the city yet has enough spaces for our bodies to be left free. while we talk about movement and its engagement,our workshop put open that our imagination gains ground in our material existence and that nothing springs up spontaniously, but that it is the out come of the carefully thought mind and the consciousness The time and moment where in a hollow space the body and its memory is worked through the language of history and created out in our imagined sense of sound,and movement. " BRITHA CHESHTA RAKHI DAO. STOBDHO NIROBOTA APONI TULIBE GORI APONAR KOTHA." on a very small note,we on behalf of performers independent extend our warm greeting and love to murali da and look forward in engaging into further workshop,like a developing seed of immense hope.also we thank our documentation team,sanyukta sharma and anirban dutta.and i send a long thread of kisses and a hearful of imagined space to my pi friends.(uma,taufik,chimuk,tapati,santosh,rituporna,rahul,suman ka,mozo,suman,shahjahan,partho,bukan,)" Aopala Bannerjee

Nonsense of Water

Presenting the KIPAF nonsense series - Day 1- 
‘if Jodi is hoi,
Yet tobu,
But kintu,
What mane ki?’

Splitting nonsense and no sense

Day 3 - Final and Tentative Schedule

Gathering/ Mob-ilising - 10. AM Academy of Fine Arts
11 AM:  Academy of Fine Arts
Surat + Kolkata Art College -

• Arijit Bhattacharya
• Soumik Ghosh
• Ushnish Mukhopadhyay
• Suvendu Sarkar
• Puja Mehta
• Mansi Bhagat
• Satish Patel

11.45: Dorothea Rust 

12.30 :Augustine Tilak

Lunch

Gathering/ Mob-ilising - 2.30pm- College Square

Each individual Performance can continue: We are listing the starting time slots

1.  Hemant Puri
2. Dimple Shah
3. Sumana Akhter
4.  Rohan Dumbre
5. Jesssica Hirst
6. Eliu Almonte
7. Pavitra Mehta
8. Palash Choudhury
9. Mangala Anebermath
10. Di Ball
11. Ayonabha Ghoshal (Pi)

kipaf day 1(23rd january)- internal report

 across the way Edward VII,sits atop his horse,as we in the back gate of victoria memorial assemble to begin our series of intervention  on this place as a commencement of kipaf 2015.early in the morning we gathered at around 8 am. pramod sahu with his 50kg  coloured grinded marble,which came all the way from raipur. The painting was of a skull (coroteeas in heard from tapati di) it lasted for two hours.and slowly all the kipaf members gathered near by.then followed a short meeting.the whole concept about kipaf was delivered to the participants of kipaf. Along with brief schedule of the festival was discussed and responsibilities were shared.from here we walked towards the academy of fine arts complex.the lunch was being cooked by prosenjit.

             in the mean  time,di ball,an australian artist framed her work by utilising the space.her work was of a transparent scroll,where text from Tagore's proshno was reflected.she wore a white dress on which there were prints of human skull,which demarcated her practice and her urge about indian mysticities.A regular vendor was there.and it seemed that all the artists interacted along with the toys.the food was ready.the delicious daal, bhaat and alu phoolkopi,and chatni was served.

      then the walk started.from academy of fine arts to esplanade tram station.we walked through the middle of maidan.with ocassional geers of foot taps and hand claps. ankur ,anirban sanyukta (the documentation team) walked along,grasping every moment  of the big march.Surprisingly,after reaching esplanade tram station,we found a singular compartment tram.apart from few of us,rest boarded the tram.while in the tram ride rhythimic sounds continued to engage all our comrades.the documentation team was remarkable.across the tram sanyukta,anirban and troyojeet were recording.with our flying friend rohan who with shahjahan at his bike rode along with his rolling camera.

                   we reached college square.one the proposed space for kipaf. along the square artists collected references. Uma with her devise touch engaged the people around.the touch told the story,of the hard-work for three extensive months. The deliberate act of asking for money was procrastinate situation arose where uma was already engaged with her performance then chimuk evoked  his performance of marking a position,blowing the whistle and covering the square on a reverse; a person started enquiringly about the whole show. uma reciprocated very naturally and the spontaneity of the material falling in with performance was remarkable.

   in the mean time chimuk covered the whole space,returning back to his marked position.the mark was interesting.A water bottle was warped with a gamcha,he placed four straws around the bottle in accordance,the moment was about chimuk breathing in air & breathing out water,the whole act created a spectacle for itself.interventions from fellow artists followed. hemant inserted a knive in the bottle and slitted the bottle through , when uma started drinking the water with rituparna .there after pavi came and  washed the floor with that gamcha and the performance slowly came to an end .after spending some more time at the square,the artist  slowly left towards their residence.the street embraced their footstep and somewhere the day for such a day concluded.

             


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Ayonabho Shanyal and Aopala Bannerjee