FEST : Arteast Festival 2019 > 14th, 15th & 16th March 2019

Venue : Main Building, India International Centre (IIC), 40 Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate

Entry : Free

Venue : Main Complex, India International Centre (IIC), 40 Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi-110003

Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Stations - 'Khan Market(Vilolet Line)' & 'Jor Bagh(Yellow Line)'
Area : Lodhi Road Area Events

Exact Locations at the venue : Main Art Gallery/Quadrangle Garden/GKM Plaza& Auditorium

Event Description : FEST : Arteast Festival 2019. 

ArtEast is an initiative to raise pertinent questions through Inter/Sections in art, livelihood, social justice, climate change, communication, history – past and present, issues that have a far reaching impact on everyday life of people and of the nation. The festival includes talks/discussions, exhibitions, and performances

Curated by Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Associate Professor and Director, New Imaginations, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat

Organised in collaboration with National Foundation for India; The Sasakawa Peace Foundation; and New Imaginations, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication

Exhibitions:

Brahmaputra – An Imagination

Photography; Art Installation; Poetry; Video Installation; and Music

Listening Post – Songs of the River

An audio immersion of river songs including Bhupen Hazarika’s conversations with the river

Anthropocene and the River

By Arati Kumar Rao, National Geographic explorer, photographer, writer and artist - charcoal and ink on paper conceptualizing the changing river, its biodiversity delving into the historical discovery of the Brahmaputra; and photographs on the river’s seasonal cycle, landscapes and people

A Sense of the Flow: Brahmaputra and Ganga

Installation by Ashima Sharma, amateur artist – using dreams, cartography and material memory, the artist imagines a cosmos that comprise the Brahmaputra-Ganga delta journeying from the mountain ranges to the sea

“Nadir Kul Nai, Kinar Nai”

By Parasher Baruah, cinematographer – a video and photography installation that feature the inhabitants of the chars of Assam through songs and explore their relationship with the river, their struggle for survival and the larger issue of migration and Identity

Seven Ages of a River: Tsangpo, Siang, Brahmaputra, Jamuna, Padma, Meghna…and?

Curated by Sumana Roy, poet and author

A selection of poems to seek a different dis-‘course’ exploring the six life-stages of the river which we recognize in different places of its journey as Tsangpo, Siang, Brahmaputra, Jamuna, Padma, and the Meghna

A Bend in the River

Video installation by Apal Singh, cinematographer and explorer – the “sky-river” is one of the most tumultuous river expeditions in the world. This labyrinthine adventure is captured through real time footage that takes the viewer through an impossible journey of the Brahmaputra and its sublime relationship with the fragile and the ever-changing human civilization

Schedule :  Add to Calendar 14/03/2019 17:00 16/03/2019 20:00 Asia/Kolkata FEST : Arteast Festival 2019 Event Page : https://www.delhievents.com/2019/03/arteast-festival-2019-india-international-centre.html Main Complex, India International Centre (IIC), 40 Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi-110003 DD/MM/YYYY

14th March : 5:00 pm onwards

Inauguration on 14 March at 17:00

On view in the Art Gallery, Kamaladevi Complex, 14 to 23 March 2019

Brahmaputra: Red River Tales

An exhibition tracing the river from its source to the delta – the “great riddle” and early explorations, creation myths and legends through archives, photographs, books, maps and excerpts – Ian Baker; Harish Kapadia; Deb Mukharji; Parimal Bhattacharya; Jo Woolf; Arupjyoti Saikia; and Royal Scottish Geographical Society

On view in the Foyer outside C.D. Deshmukh Auditorium and Quadrangle Garden, 14 to 16 March 2019

AT 18:00 IN C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

Inauguration

Opening remarks by Ms Jashodhara Dasgupta, Executive Director, NFI

1 sq. ft

Concept, Design & Choreography: Surjit Nongmeikapam, contemporary and traditional dancer from Manipur

Dance presented by Surjit Nongmeikapam, Waikhom Biken, Senjam Hemjit

1 sq. ft is based on the experiences of people who have been displaced by war, persecution or violence. In its present iteration, the work captures the effects of displacement of the human body, exploring how it may react to an unrelenting series of brutal changes. Nongmeikapam draws from the socio-political climate of his home state, Manipur, while attempting to approach displacement as a human, somatic, phenomenon

15th March : 2:30 pm onwards

INTER/SECTIONS FROM 14:30 TO 17:00 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX 

On Time, History and the River

Rivers connect people, civilisations, the past to the present, but they also divide places from one another. The Brahmaputra that originates as Tsangpo in Tibet manages to transcend these divisions and dichotomies. It has an enormous breadth and variety that sails into various channels of expression giving rise to a diverse body of literature ranging from music to ecology, material memory to mythology  

Panelists: Arupjyoti Saikia, Professor in History & Suryya Kumar Bhuyan Endowment Chair on Assam History, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati; Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor of Environmental Studies and History, Ashoka University; Joydeep Gupta, South Asia Director, The Third Pole Project; and Claude Arpi, French-born author, journalist, historian and Tibetologist

Moderated by Uma Dasgupta, former Research Professor, Social Science Division, Indian Statistical Institute who has also  taught at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan

AT 18:30 IN C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

Visions of Paradise in the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra Gorge

Illustrated presentation by Ian Baker, Himalayan and Buddhist scholar and author of seven books on Tibetan cultural history, environment, art, and medicine including The Heart of the World: A Journey in Tibet’s Lost Paradise (Penguin Random House, 2006)

The Tsangpo–Brahmaputra Gorge is recognised as the Earth’s deepest chasm. For generations, Eastern and Western explorers sought the coordinates of a hidden paradise that was prophesied in Tibetan scriptures to lie in the depths of the gorge, concealed by the fabled 'Falls of the Brahmaputra’. Beyul Pemako, the ‘Hidden-Land Arrayed like Lotuses’, became an obsession that inspired imaginations across the planet and established enduring legends. The waterfall remained an unresolved geographical mystery until November 1998 when Ian Baker reached the base of the falls in the depths of the Tsangpo–Brahmaputra Gorge

16th March : 11 am onwards 

INTER/SECTIONS FROM 11:00 TO 13:30 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX

Brahmaputra – Explorer Odyssey

One of the most compelling questions that obsessed 19th century European explorers were sources of rivers. In India it was the Brahmaputra- though a lot of Tibet was mapped, a riddle had remained unsolved about the course of the river Tsangpo originating at 24000 feet running east for 1000 miles entering an impenetrable gorge and within a span of just 150 miles plunging 9000 feet to take a sharp turn and enter India. It took an illiterate tailor from Darjeeling with a  prodigious memory to eventually solve this riddle

Panelists: Parimal Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, Department of English, Maulana Azad College, Kolkata, and a bilingual writer, most recently, of Dodopakhider Gaan (Ababhash, 2019) and No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight: Memories of a Hill Town (Speaking Tiger, 2017); Samrat Choudhury, also known as Samrat X, author and journalist; and Harish Kapadia, distinguished Himalayan Mountaineer, author and long-time editor of Himalayan Journal

Moderated by Kishalay Bhattacharjee 

FROM 15:00 TO 15:45 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX

On the Brahmaputra Tea Trail 

In 1823 the first Assam tea was sent to England for public sale that led to the Brahmaputra Valley becoming the Empire’s favourite garden. The tea that Europe woke up to sailed down the Brahmaputra. The story of tea is not just the romance of the wild bush but how it significantly contributed to Britain’s economy

Dhurbajit Chaliha, a tea planter from Assam journeys down the river’s tea story and shows how to brew leaves for the perfect cup

FROM 16:00 TO 18:00 IN SEMINAR ROOMS I TO III, KAMALADEVI COMPLEX

Imagining a New Commons: Ganga and Brahmaputra

Is there a river-imagination? If so, then the Brahmaputra-imagination unfolds a creative universe that challenges the imagination of the Ganga- the symbol and idea of India, the ‘mainstream’, the ‘holy’, ‘Hindu’ or even perhaps the notion of ‘salvation’. The imagination of Brahmaputra is a cosmos, a shared space, and a constitution. It spans many civilisations and defies the idea of the “holy” with its experience of the sacred. It links the local, national and transnational. The Brahmaputra with its many names is an invitation to perpetrate a new thinking, a new imagination while renewing classical modes of thought. It captures the so-called Indian syncretism in a new way, moving beyond the Ganga-Jamuni tradition. Both Ganga and Brahmaputra flow from the same mountain ranges and merge downstream to meet the sea. It is one and at the same time different

Panelists: Shiv Vishvanathan, Social Scientist, Professor at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat and Director, Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems, O.P Jindal Global University ; Uma Dasgupta; Ian Baker; and Claude Arpi

Moderated by Sumana Roy, poet and author of How I Became a Tree (Aleph, 2017) and Missing (Aleph, 2018) who writes from Siliguri, a small town in sub-Himalayan Bengal

AT 18:30 IN C.D. DESHMUKH AUDITORIUM

Yes, The River Knows… 

Concert presented by Chaar Yaar  - Madan Gopal Singh (vocalist & poet); Deepak Castelino (guitar & banjo); Pritam Ghosal (sarod); and Amjad Khan (percussion)

The imagination of Brahmaputra and Ganga is a unique kind of syncretism. Chaar Yaar brings to ArtEast a fusion of different genres of music to celebrate this new conversation

Related Links : Art Exhibitions  | Dance | Music | Poetry | Environment | Talks