Kolkata
International Performance Art Festival 2015
Curatorial
Note
‘if
Jodi is hoi,
Yet
tobu,
But
kintu,
What
mane ki?’
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. Interventions can be made by
re-enacting the everyday activities in performative gestures and, politics of
contestation embodied in a spatial frame can introduce a poetic rupture and
transformative ambiguity. Performance art provides us modes and languages of
engaging with space by reconfiguring the available representations of the
body—the medium—and a possibility to explore the body to act as a site of
inhabiting that space and the emotions, sentiments, moral anxieties. Hence, we
are in agreement that performance art has the potential to convert a space with
hidden tensions into a contested space by introducing and interrogating these
tensions.
How do we conceive the role
of Kolkata, the city space, while spatially identifying it as our site of
source of collective embodiment during KIPAF 2015? We treat spatial presence as
intersected, particularly at present, with multiple temporalities, discourses
of identity and new aspirations to progress where, space is approached as
material, measurable and marketable resource. Kolkata International Performance
Art Festival (KIPAF) – 2015 aims to explore the concept and materiality of
space in its multiplicity and complexity and reveal the possible contestations
that are both visible and invisible. This exploration simultaneously involves
an active interrogation of the grammar and language of performance art itself, but
more importantly the very notion of ‘contestation’ from the perspective of a
disciplinary critique of performance art.
Keeping its minority
position within the field of art and its history, performance art as language
endows us with a lever to question the aesthetics of contemporary art
practices. We would also like the participants to ponder over notions of space
(subterranean, official, ornamental), the very idea of contestation, its
relation with performance art, and ways in which contestation is performed
within the framework of performance art.
KIPAF itself is emerging as a site of contestations, challenging the notions
of what is organization? What is curation? And what are the broader
implications of the ways in which the curatorial space is produced and
circulated? Where do we stand in relation to these modes of production and
distribution?
KIPAF15 invites applications in three following
categories:
Curated Section
The section would include
the set of proposals that KIPAF considers as the core representative of the
festival, taking into account the extent of resonance of the proposals with
KIPAF-15 curatorial note and the engagement with the framework of performance
art practice.
Open Section
The proposals invited in
this section are aimed to include as many participant artists as possible, from
across the hierarchies of practices, regions and nations. The performances
selected of this section may run parallel to the curated section.
Students Section
Keeping the growth of
performance art practice within the art schools and increasing interest of the
student-artists, this section welcomes the students to perform, participate and
interact with the artists in enriching themselves as well as the general
understanding of performance art at present.
We don’t aim to create any
commodity or service.
We try to create an
atmosphere for communication among artists and friends and also with the place
and its people. We presume that art rises or falls out of atmospheres.
Performance art offers us a
medium where diverse disciplines can meet. We try to work with the bare minimum
as far as money is concerned. We organize KIPAF with small contributions and
donations from friends and public bodies. We think it necessary to keep this
festival as a place to practice art and interaction outside the patronage of
big capital.
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.
Performers independent’s
basic concern is to work with the science and art of our traditional
hospitality and local fair (shadhu-shanga)
practices in our present urban art contexts.
23rd January to 26th January 2015
kolkata
kolkata
Blog: kipaf.blogspot.in/
Email address: kipaf2013@gmail.com
For
More information contact
Taufik
Riaz (+919674259397)/Chimuk(+919836352770)
