Direct Conenct Series @ Religare Art, Saket

"History does nothing;
it does not possess immense riches,
it does not fight battles.
It is men, real, living, who do all this."
YEAH KARL BABY,
you're still as right as ever!

GOD BLESS THE WORKERS WHO BUILT THE PLAYGROUND FOR THIS RESIDENCY TO PLAY IN !

RUNNING UP TO THE OPENING OF THE RESIDENCY
SO MANY DAYS GONE BY
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

Here we are... a day before the residency begins. Tomorrow the first batch of artists comes in. Workmen finished putting down the plinth of the Connaught Place circles. And then one night, the framework for the aerial map arrived. The map of Connaught Place up there next to the roof. A pie in the sky. All together, this is the framework for the installation based on The WhyNot Place theme.
These are the frameworks that all our 25 artists will be breathing life into for the next ten weeks. Sink or swim… this is the pool its going to happen in.
The assured way the workers on the floor handle their respective crafts while putting the installation framework into place. Carpenters, welders, electricians… all seem to know exactly what to do and when.
For example, how do you draw five concentric circles simultaneously on the installation floor? For the carpenters this one was a no-brainer. They just took a long strip of plywood. Hammered six nails into it at the different lengths – each representing the length of the radius of the next concentric circle. Then they hammered the nail closest to the end of the strip into the floor. And then turned the strip around on the floor and there they were – five perfect concentric circles scratched into the floor of the installation space. Ready to receive five layers of metal track.
A million and a half things got planned, honed, dropped, picked up again and dropped again and so on… activities, performances, PR, documentaries, documentation, administration, budgets… basic stuff like designing the teeshirts and the posters… compartmented space for the artists' studios or an open plan... after a whole load of agonizing, we went for the open plan simply because it let in all the natural light and let the artists talk and look and touch and feel each other's work all the time... too many things, too little time... what to do or not to do… Every time the same self-questioning... How intrusive would it be? Would it look hyped up and overheated… more art market than art initiative?? So many times, I heard myself or one among us say, ”Tell you what, lets figure this out as we go along. Good we discussed this and got a handle on it.” And so Alice moved on hurtling down the rabbit-hole…

Rearview mirror 25 May, 2009 : The frameworks for Connaught Place are on the ground and the map that the artists will fill is very clear. There it is laid out on the floor. Mapped out in commercial board. This shape that Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker and an army of assistants must have slaved over. Now reduced to a graphic shape being handled by desi carpenters. Somewhere Lutyens’ ghost must be having a quiet chuckle or turning in its grave – if it was really imperially minded.

Looking back in my rearview mirror. Almost two months have passed since since we wrote that. Will probably wander around all day thinking of how much we actually managed to let all that guide us… on the ground.

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 !