1. Surajit Sarkar 19 Nov 2015 IIAS Leiden Ambedkar University Delhi
From memory to heritage
Creative engagements with local memory
Bhand Pather performance, Kupwara, Kashmir, 2011
The Natyasastra, the the ancient sanskrit text on drama and dramaturgy, opens by saying that the first time a dramatic performance was performed, it was never allowed to be completed. The demons interrupted it not once, but even the second time around. After talking to them, Brahma , the creator of the universe, declared that no art, no knowledge, no action - ever known would not be found in this new form.
The Bhand pathers, a A dramatic form of storytelling, Bhand Pather is based on mythological stories and narratives most of which are of Hindu characters performed by Muslim actors. The stories incorporate characters and narrators that tell stories of contemporary social satire. The peformances use dry humour, satire full of irony and more often than not depict the triumph of good over evil. There is no nostalgia for the utopic land of Kashmir either, but direct mimicry to produce sharp distortions. The political becomes performative not by the creation of a vision of distant peace and beauty, but by using comic devices.
Surajit Sarkar Nov IIAS Leiden Ambedkar University Delhi

2. Bakhtin and the Carnival
alternative voices, ‘dialogism’ and contested cultural life
A performance with no boundary between performers and audience.
Occurring on the border between art and life, shaped according to a pattern of play.
Diverse voices are heard and interact, breaking down conventions and creating chance for a new perspective.
In Rabelais and his World, Bakhtin discusses carnivalesque (or ‘folk-humour’,) a particular speech-genre which occurs across a variety of cultural sites, most notably in carnival itself. Carnivalesque occasions in which the political, legal and ideological authority of both the church and state were inverted — albeit temporarily — during the anarchic and liberating period of the carnival.
A carnival is a moment when everything (except arguably violence) is permitted. It occurs on the border between art and life, and is a kind of life shaped according to a pattern of play. It is usually marked by displays of excess and grotesqueness.
It is a type of performance, but this performance is communal, with no boundary between performers and audience. It creates a situation in which diverse voices are heard and interact, breaking down conventions and enabling genuine dialogue, by forming the collective narrative for that space and time. It creates the chance for a new perspective and a new order of things, by showing the relative nature of all that exists.
Allowing for explorations in subversion, laughter, ambivalence, and becoming - authority and tradition. Dwindled with replacement of feudalism by capitalism.
Peter Brueghel, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559

3. Lamlong, Imphal valley, Manipur – August 2004
Dialogues with memory # 1
Theme – water in the locality
Background – unplanned urbanisation, unregulated flooding,
confrontation between neighbourhoods.
Objective - Creating a milieu for discussion using the creative arts.
Provoking multiple narratives in a public setting.
Introducing oral (contemporary) and written narratives from history on the theme.
Making layers of meaning visible - the relational and dialogic have precedence over the static and realist. The presence of the others makes for compelling narratives. Making visible the disconnect between local knowledge and the everyday.
Lamlong, Imphal valley, Manipur – August 2004

4. Representational space Representations of Space Espace conçu
Lefebvre and Triad of Space
Every experience of space has three interrelated aspects
Representational space
Espace perçu
Representations of Space Espace conçu
Spatial Practice
Espace vécu
Social Space –(Sensation/ action)
Mental Space (abstraction / representation)
Physical space (nature)
Percieved space – a fence – as experienced, which the imagination seeks to change
Conceived - Maps, plans, designs – the fence and ownership
Lived space – a fence marks boundary and defines area within -
by routine and in reality
Space is produced by dynamic interrelationships between representation of space , representational space (with forces of production) and spatial practice.
Lefebvre means that humans create the space in which they make their lives; it is a project shaped by interests of classes, experts, the grassroots, and other contending forces. Space is not simply inherited from nature, or passed on by the dead hand of the past, or autonomously determined by "laws" of spatial geometry as per conventional location theory. Space is produced and reproduced through human intentions, even if unanticipated consequences also develop, and even as space constrains and influences those producing it.

5. Socially produced Space
The social production of space is fundamental to its control and reproduction
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This domain of lived experience is, I believe, full of contradictions and seeming opposites… If we try to conceive of it or translate it into discourse by mapping it into espace conçu we change it. If we try to perceptualize lived experience by bringing it into espace perçu we change it as well. It can only be understood on its own plane of lived experience in the here and now. It then becomes both/and as opposed to either/or…
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6. Dialogues with memory # 2
A village now part of the city
Shadi Khampur, West Delhi, 2012

7. People, artefacts, histories
Embroidered phulkari wedding shawl, 1954/55
Meals for the single working men, 2012
A family buys a truck, 1975
A hookah and drum (nagada), around 1915

8. Making the collection What marks the neighbourhood
What is to be collected
How is this exploration to be done
Who from the neighbourhood will introduce the team
Laundry equipment repair shop
150 year old well. The only one not yet filled up.

9. What emerged
An exhibit of collected narratives from bottom-up to create a people-centred view of Delhi.
A record of the life stories of residents of a locality to display the diversity of lives and livelihoods in the city.
An exploration of “neighbourhood pride” and “identity” that doesn't forget ethnicity, yet is not limited by it.

10. A Response

11. Using the arts to make a public statement…
Pipariya, Madhya Pradesh, 2009
The performances bring a sense of recognition to communities at the margin.
Aurangabad, Maharashtra, 2011

12. Telling it as it is remembered
Catapult Arts Caravan
Combines folk art and digital technology, like traditional Jatra with multimedia in public performance.
The performances articulate issues and ideas of common interest to the audience.
Sharing local stories to an audience from the neighborhood.

13. Thank You