Invitation for applications

Kolkata International Performance Art Festival - 2016

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 was conceived to address the nascent nature of Performance Art in India, and continues to play a significant role in the practice, pedagogy and outreach of  performance art in South Asia. KIPAF ‘13,’14 & ‘15 have got participation from  Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Japan, Israel, Belgium ,Italy , Switzerland & various parts of India. 

The Festival happens every year from 23rd to 26th January.KIPAF is also becoming special as many students from institutions like  KAlA Bhavan Shantiniketan, Fine Arts College Surat, Kashhmir Art College travel to Kolkata, as observers and participants of the Open section. The independent nature of KIPAF has been maintained by constantly developing alternate modes of fundraising, involving street paintings, live art, sticker and post card campaigns. Since 2015 KIPAF is taking a workshop based turn, as we invite artists to come a week before KIPAF and initiate workshops.  

The Thematic focus of KIPAF16 is 

“Why kill a Mocking art"

We have proposed three questions as formulations:

1.   What is it that makes us chase what we prioritize as the needful?

2.    Where do we find intimacy in performance art?

3.   How do we interrogate those very intimate aspirations that drive us towards performance as art?

Along with further propositions: 

• How do we position between art performance and performance art?
• A street is a space?
• What is the relationship between performativity, performance and authorship?
• Folks, let us embrace the fun of burning down the ideas we have cherished as our own. 
•  us practice the act of distancing ourselves from the familiar, the tropes. Let us do a 
• We don’t aim to create any commodity or service. A documenter is not meant to document.

Performers independent’s basic concern is to work out the formal, circumstantial, performative 

aspects of our everyday practices of hospitality. We invite you to occupy the ghats and galis of the 

older part of Kolkata, popularly known as the ‘north’. For the next i.e. KIPAF2016, the open call has already been declared -http://ikipaf.blogspot.in/2015/10/kipaf16-open-call.html. Mail us your proposals at kipaf.curator@gmail.com

We are glad to invite you at Kolkata International Performance Art Festival 2016 to be held in the city 

of Kolkata from the 23rd to the 26th of January, 2016. 

We hope that we will have you with us in that time of festival. Pi will provide you with modest 

accommodation, food and lively work atmosphere during the festival.

With regards and love.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely

Curator ,Kipaf 2016

http://ikipaf.blogspot.in/

p.s – We are Unable to offer the artists any remuneration or travel expenses to and from Kolkata, 

we take responsibilities of the curated artists’ stay, food and local conveyance 

in the city. We will share the same with all participants as much as our limits allow.