KIPAF
is an annual 4 day event organized by Pi, an artists’ collective based in
Kolkata & Shantiniketan. KIPAF is a
festival where artists from inland & abroad gather in Kolkata for 4days
(23rd -26th January every year) to interact, collaborate & perform at
diverse sites like regular art galleries, academic institutions and also
everyday places of living.
Note
Broadly, the theme of these forthcoming performances is “movement as a way of being human”. The idea of movement is too often boxed in cartographic imaginaries—the traveller’s starting point of the journey, and its termination is represented as episodes with clear cut objectives—of escaping, of retiring, of invading, of accumulating, of overcoming. Like most cosmopolitan cities, Kolkata too has its formal spatial and cultural enclaves, its cartographic grids.
We plan to go beyond the threshold of object based movements, their preoccupation with karma, and the restraints they pose in favour of embracing the idea of being nowhere in the city, and embody the vicissitudes of habitation. The inspiration for our performance is the boat people, who are crudely categorized as illegal immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. We celebrate their courage to disown the familiar in favour of the high seas by simulating in our performances the ability to be nowhere. From the representative point of view, our inspiration remains Iranian woman director Samira Makhmalbuf’s movie “Blackboard” (1999), based on the experience of travelling across borders of Kurdistan in Iran.
In order to underscore the sense of being in the interstices or inhabiting the in between, we have chosen culturally enshrined sites, such as the ghats. In India, ghats represent the stairs separating the river from the land. Ghat is the site of declension and ascension. Historically, ghats (especially those in Northern India) along the Ganges have produced profound works of oral (the retelling of epic sagas) as well as bodily performances such as the Indian form of wrestling or kushti.
Historically, areas close to ghats have also hosted the crematoriums, along with figures who animate these spaces daily. Today, areas around the ghats are being re-evaluated for their real estate value, thus threatening the integrity of spatial and cultural practices that have evolved over centuries. In their sombre eloquence Ghats embody the waves of time. Through our performances we hope to bring out the sense of being moved by the desire to belong on the one hand, and the untethered spirit that seeks to spread its wings out, against all obstacles.
