Kolkata and Delhi to host PARALLEL CITIES (CIUDADES PARALELAS)
A project curated by Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias, PARALLEL CITIES (CIUDADES PARALELAS) invites artists to devise interventions in public spaces that exhibit parallel existences.
A project curated by Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias, PARALLEL CITIES (CIUDADES PARALELAS) invites artists to devise interventions in public spaces that exhibit parallel existences. Kolkata and Delhi are scheduled to host the project in December 2012 and January 2013 respectively.
Hotel rooms, shopping centres, factories... these are functional places, not usually thought of as interesting to the outside eye. But without them life in the city would be uninhabitable. Their ubiquitous, parallel existences the world over mean these places are instantly recognisable, each modelled on similar rules but displaying a local face.
For “Ciudades Paralelas”, Lola Arias and Stefan Kaegi have invited several artists to devise interventions into these kinds of spaces. Six artists have each chosen a location in the city as observation stations for urban phenomena. Some of them chose to work with radio receivers or headphones, others with people in their workspaces.
The pieces vary in form: You can listen to some of them, others you can read or touch. Some are for a single, others for 100 spectators. The performers include factory workers, cleaners, a blind musician, writers, passers-by or even the audience itself.
Gerardo Naumann’s factory workers take viewers on a subjective journey along the production line at their place of work.
Via headphones, Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells whisper to us over the silence of a library reading-room.
Mariano Pensotti turns four authors into literary surveillance cameras who describe scenes in a Metro station as they happen. The viewers read the texts as a novel unfolding live on large screens over the heads of its real-life figures.
The Ligna activists choreograph their listeners in a shopping mall, turning their movements into a conspiratorial radio ballet.
Lola Arias presents hotel rooms haunted by the stories of the cleaning staff – ghosts who appear when nobody else is there and clean up after the guest has left.
And, late in the evening, Stefan Kaegi invites you to a roof with a view over the city to review all these experiences with a blind artist. Rewinding the experiences from her perspective you find yourself wondering what you will remember of the day.
The projects make theatre out of public spaces used every day, and seduces the viewers into staying long enough for their perception to change. They invite you to subjectively experience places built for anonymous crowds.
“Ciudades Paralelas” offers six perspectives on one city. A festival that doesn’t transport stage sets or companies of actors but ideas.. Via location scouting and casting sessions the six artists are networked with each city. In this way, Ciudades Paralelas wanders from country to country as a mobile research laboratory, building up an archive of guerrilla tactics for appropriating cities.
Ciudades Paralelas is a coproduction between HAU Berlin and Schauspielhaus Zürich, in collaboration with Goethe- Institute India, Teatr Nowy and the foundation of Teatr Nowy. Commissioned by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council.
Kolkata Schedule:
11 to 18 December 2012 Factory- La fabricà / Monginis Bakery Kolkata
11 to 18 December 2012 Library- The quiet volume / Ramakrishna Mission Library
11 to 18 December 2012 Station- Sometimes I think I can see you / Park Street Metro Station
11 to 17 December 2012 Hotel- Room Service / Taj Bengal
11 to 18 December 2012 Roof- Review / Everest House
11 to 18 December 2012 Shopping Centre- The first international of Shopping Centers / South City Mall
After Kolkata, Ciudades Paralelas wil be presented in New Delhi in January 2013.
More:
http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/kol/en10108358v.htm
www.ciudadesparalelas.com
LAYOUT 2, a location based collaborative construction
Swiss artist Navid Tschopp collaborates once again with Indian artists Sayantan Maitra Boka, Susanta Mandal and M. Pravat to present LAYOUT 2, a location based collaborative construction as part of the Kochi Biennale.
Swiss artist Navid Tschopp collaborates once again with Indian artists Sayantan Maitra Boka, Susanta Mandal and M. Pravat to present LAYOUT 2, a location based collaborative construction as part of the Kochi Biennale. The project aims to create spatial voids deliberately rather than incidentally during the process of construction.
“Layout02 ” is a location based 'aesthetic construction' , that interrogates the standard engineered urban space, in this case an urban Kochi landscape . Four artists make a partnership seeking to transform and mutate the typical architectural process using four distinct approaches. The resulting convergence of these four unique eccentricities is seen to function as one self-contained artwork and the product of the interaction is a source of discovery for both the artists and the audience.
Within the dynamic morphology of cityscapes, any attempt at forming representational models to reflect that dynamism poses a number of challenges, more so because any city itself is largely constituted by innumerable layers of images and imaginations. Whereas many images find a picture-plane, there are imaginations, desires, and resentments that gradually seep into fissures and cracks to form a different substrata. With excavation and archival retrieving as the most commonly spoken-about tropes today, could there be other ways to illuminate that which is beneath? This initiative aims to delve into that substrata, albeit not with a mind to excavate but to 'project onto' through the diverse approaches of 4 creative practitioners from India and Switzerland. Such a process of discovery aims to unravel the various layers defining the semantics.
Layout is an artist collective which was born in November 2010, at an artist studio space in New Delhi, India. All were interested in making site specific art installation working mostly with construction material, partially influenced by the DIY culture . The artists are concerned with a specific cultural landscape whose character is influenced by the geological structure , history and culture into which they integrate their work. The group draws inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that is solely expressed through hypothetical projects. The members are M Pravat , Navid Tschopp , Sayantan Maitra Boka and Susanta Mandal.
M.Pravat is a prolific painter who studied from Baroda and participated in innumerable shows in India and abroad. Currently he has been meditating on the notion of flexibility of the designed space, and his prior works dealt it by creating 'fake' architectural blueprints.
Navid Tschopp , is a Swiss artist and his artistic approach is in the field between orient and occident and contains the many layers between image and action ,his research is about identity in the field of transcultural images and in context art. He has studied architecture and art.
Sayantan Maitra Boka is an architect and scenographer by qualification, and a career in art by choice. He heads an interactive design firm , Illusion In Motion and is an active member of the NGO, Shelter Promotion Council (India) , through which he has started producing and curating Public Art Festivals in different parts of North East India to identify issues and questioning them through the medium of contemporary and new media art.
Susanta Mandal's recent art practice is involved with the issue of energy; whether it’s pipeline politics or other form of mechanism involved with energy. His mixed media installations, which often utilize spotlights and kinetic mechanisms seem playful, but are actually uncanny and ultimately disconcerting constructions.
The collective is currently working on the Sarai Reader Show 09 in Devi Art Foundation , Gurgaon and Kiran Nadar Museum , Noida .
Parallel Cities - Time Out Delhi Photo Exhibition
Parallel Cities - Time Out Delhi Photo Exhibition / Call for photo submission.
It’s no secret that despite their banal uniformity, malls are no longer just shopping centres, but social areas that are firmly integrated into Delhi’s cultural landscape. They’re not just places where you go for retail therapy, but for catching a rare documentary, cutting-edge art, talks, performances and of course, chit-chat and people-watching.
Time Out Delhi, in collaboration with Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhawan, invites professional and amateur photographers to submit photographs that capture the inside of a shopping mall. Twenty images will be selected for a forthcoming exhibition in early January, while eight of the best images will be published in Time Out Delhi.
The Delhi exhibition is an extension of PARALLEL CITIES, a project curated by theatre professionals Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias from Switzerland and Argentina respectively. The duo have previously worked with artists in cities such as Berlin, Buenos Aires, Warsaw and Zurich to devise interventions in public spaces for their Parallel Cities project. These interventions have included a radio ballet in malls, a walk through an installation composed of the biographies the invisible cleaning staff in hotel rooms, and a journey through the production line of a factory, with a focus on its workers. The curators will stage interventions with local performers in Delhi as well. Be a part of exploring these “parallel cities” and, next time you’re in a mall, start clicking away.
For information on the Parallel Cities project visit www.ciudadesparalelas.com.
Exhibition dates: 10 - 12 January 2013
Venue: Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhawan, New Delhi
Selected eight images will be published in the January issue of TIME OUT DELHI.
Selected twenty images will be exhibited in the PARALLEL CITIES - TIME OUT DELHI PHOTO EXHIBITION
Theme: The inside of a shopping mall.
The images should offer different perspectives of the inside of a mall.Images should be illustrative, conceptual or offer a symbolic representation of the shopping mall.
The publication looks forward to receiving images that showcase the photographer's unique interpretation of the subject.
Manner of submission:
Via e-mail: parallelcities.timeoutdelhi(at)gmail.com
Specifications: low-res jpeg images / 200dpi.
Hi-res images will be requested for if selected for the exhibition or for publishing.
The submission should be accompanied by a few lines introducing the photographer and the image(s).
Last date for submission: 25 December 2012
Photographers of selected images will be notified via email. Time Out Delhi and Parallel Cities reserves the right to make the final selection.
There is no fee provided for the images that are published or part of the exhibition.
All images will be duly accredited.
PROJECT PARALLEL CITIES (CIUDADES PARALELAS ): DELHI JANUARY 2013
A project curated by Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias, PARALLEL CITIES invites artists to devise interventions in public spaces that exhibit parallel existences. Ubiquitous locations, like the mall and the library have been chosen in Delhi as observation stations for this urban intervention. In Delhi the project is jointly presented by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan. PARALLEL CITIES is a coproduction between HAU Berlin and Schauspielhaus Zürich, in collaboration with Goethe-Institute Warschau, Teatr Nowy and the foundation of Teatr Nowy. Commissioned by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and Goethe Institut Buenos Aires.
For more information: www.ciudadesparalelas.com/
