THE WHYNOT PLACE Art Residency Programme

It’s been a good hot Delhi summer so far and the Religare Arts.i is adding to the creative ferment in the city, with its path-breaking WhyNot Place Art Day-Residency Programme. WhyNot Place, the theme of the art residency programme : every up or down is fertile ground for a whole world of possibilities !
The Religare Arts.i is located in Connaught Place, the heart of New Delhi. Connaught Place (CP) is a relatively new city centre created by colonial town planners in 1911 when the capital of British India was shifted to Delhi from Calcutta. New Delhi as a city, was planned on the outer limits of Shahjahanabad or Old Delhi. The day New Delhi and CP were completed, all the power and a huge slice of dynamism flowed out of Old Delhi into the new colonial capital.
For many decades, CP and New Delhi were Delhi’s nerve centre. This urban centrality gradually decreased as Delhi grew radially outwards, first to all the colonies in South and West Delhi, then through all the development in North Delhi and lastly as the city ballooned in terms of population, in East Delhi. The huge residential and commercial real estate development boom in Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Noida were also responsible for some of Delhi’s vitality shifting outwards.
By the early 2000’s shopkeepers in CP were lamenting the decline in the quality of their market. The vitality and dynamism of the city centre had reached its outer limit and CP was dying – much the way Old Delhi declined 80 years before.
The arrival of the metro in CP suddenly injected a whole new energy into CP. Everyone in Delhi who had earlier been daunted by the long journey, now found it very simple to use every excuse to get to CP. And suddenly all of Delhi was thronging to CP all over again. All it took was one intervention, and CP bustling all over again in a whole new way.
Cities, city centres, city limits… they’re all like that. They rise, they spread, they over-reach, they stretch too thin, they decline, competition either aids their decline or forces them to revitalize… they die, they rise again. The Delhi of today, itself encompasses seven cities of Delhi over time.
Similarly, summer is seen as a season of decline in CP. “Nothing happens in summer, so why bother going out in the heat for anything more than you absolutely have to?” is a common lament. Well, hopefully, that will change with THE WHYNOT PLACE ART DAY-RESIDENCY PROGRAMME ! We do hope that the energy and activity of the programme will similarly revitalize the Delhi summer lethargy in CP and give people good reasons to go out and challenge and enjoy themselves, despite the heat!
The Whynot Place Art Programme aims to redefine and recharge CP as a living, learning epicenter of the artistic possibilities inherent in the WHYNOT idea, that has the potential to revitalize any place, anything, anyone…
We thus offer CONNAUGHT PLACE, THE WHYNOT PLACE as the theme to all participating artists.
We would encourage artists to map the history, the geography of CP, all that happens here, its possibilities, its successes and its failures, its opportunities and its inequalities, its people, examine who CP really belongs to, who really uses CP, its urban character, its marketplace character, its space as a mere corridor through which populations pass to get somewhere else in so many dimensions.
We hope all participating artists find the lessons of hopeful birth, good productive life, inevitable decay and the inevitable resurgence and rebirth in the streets, bylanes, arcades, shops, parks, garbage dumps, metro stations, corridors and oddball spaces of CP…. And having found these valuable lessons of humanity, are able to pass the learning onward to audiences through the art they will generate at the day-residency.
We have designed the programme so that artists find their individual voices to express what they perceive as being the content, journey and lessons of CP… as well harness their individual voice to a common collaborative artistic vision of CP and how it plays out in space and time…
The lessons of CP’s journey are there for all to observe and learn from… similar spaces, people, communities… every place, everyone can be WhyNot Place…All who will see, will see….

Interactions built into the programme
We would like artists to use this opportunity to springboard into capabilities they never knew they had. Which is why we have a diversity of artists ranging across different disciplines and sensibilities. In the process, we hope the interaction yields huge learnings in all directions – for every artist and for everyone who will be touched in any way by this innovative art initiative.
We have planned an array of interactions. With film-makers, critics, students, children from all backgrounds, students of every hue, artists of diverse talents, the lay community… we hope this interaction too will be educative for all who participate.

A brief outline of the mechanics of the WhyNot Place Art Day-Residency Programme

The mini-residency programme will consist of 25 participating artists, divided into 5 batches of 5 artists each. Each batch of 5 artists will be in day-residence at the Religare Arts.i Gallery in Connaught Place, New Delhi for a duration of two weeks. During the two week day residency, each artist will be provided with a studio and conducive creative conditions; and in the process will create an original individual art work on site; as well as collaborate with the other artists in the batch to collectively work on a 3D installation in the studio.
While each batch of 5 artists works on their individual and collaborative works, a group exhibition of each participating batch will be held in the gallery. At the end of the 10 weeks, a grand exhibition of the collaborative installation and the artists’ individual works will be exhibited at the Religare Arts.i gallery.

Looking forward !
Given the experimental nature of The WhyNot Place Art Day-Residency Programme, all we can do is borrow two contrasting thoughts, to conclude inconclusively : The more things change, the more they stay the same…
AND…
We have seen the future… and it is still in the future…
Good luck to us all !