The colloquium “Amidst Owls, Torpedoes and Serpents”, was held on 27th October 2024, at India International Center, New Delhi. With 12 panelists, and moderators who were also contributors in Call #1, the colloquium was the second plane of activation for Call #1.

 

 

The panelists included SEA (Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty), Sonam Chaturvedi, Paribartana Mohanty, Vijai Maia Patchineelam, Mohit Shelare, Shveta Sarda, Priyank Gothwal, Praveen Ashokan, Aletheia Hyun-Jin Shin, Shramona Maiti and Lantian Xie, with Priyesh Gothwal, Soumya Yadav, Anurag Singraur and Ritika Verma as the moderators.

 

The Colloquium was divided into 4 panels: 

  1. Meandering Institutional Cracks: Detecting, Camouflaging and Moulding

Panelists: SEA (Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty), Sonam Chaturvedi

Moderator: Priyesh Gothwal

 

2. Meandering Institutional Cracks: Phantoms, Pluggings and Morphings

Panelists: Mohit Shelare , Vijai Maia Patchineelam , Paribartana Mohanty

Moderator: Soumya Yadav 

 

3. Lateral Avant Garde(s), Unattained Moderns and Contemporary Sandwichings

Panelists: Shveta Sarda , Priyank Gothwal , Praveen Ashokan

Moderator: Anurag Singraur 

 

4. Towards (un)groundings: Desiring, Co-modellings, and Associative Ferments

Panelists: Aletheia Hyun-Jin Shin , Shramona Maiti , Lantian Xie

Moderator: Ritika Verma 

 

     

 

     

 

Within reflections with the audience, panellists, moderators, and contributors, opacities and sterilities were brought to the surface, along with anxieties about language and the effect of time. What happens to the desire to gather and converse when there is a shift in the nature of spaces, assumed or felt? Does geographical and spatial mobility contour intellectual mobility? Could we bring out a rusty springiness that might be hidden in the seemingly unmovable foundation of established institutions?

The colloquium gave way to extremely urgent questions: An urge to form an institutional space constantly churning; A figure of the artist-mentor-educator mobile within institutions of different densities, thinking of translations, shifting of protocols, and the agency of the artistic figure within such spaces;  A backyard of materials that turns into a graveyard of agency, Bringing the institution to the table at their own time and their own expense. Pluggings, morphings and phantoms continue haunting our pedagogy and imaginative limits. The urge to find a new, to revel in the old and transform it into the new. Between transpiration, transformation and trans-inspiration. To meander through resonating, associative scores. Thinking with donkeys beyond labour and think of the horses that are deemed to be a donkey historically and culturally. Thinking of the history of space making within India, its history and exchanges with the rest of the world; Of social ferments, with relationships, building communities, and the urge to be anti-gravity; to be unanchored, unburdened of the weight of time, perceived legacies and historical spearheadings.

 

The Colloquium was made possible through crowd funding. Hekh would like to thank Aditi Purwar, Ankit Parsad, Anish Chawla,  Avik Debdas, Bazik Thlana, CAMP,  Deepak Punia, Jeebesh Bagchi, Inder Salim, Manan Rai, Nikesh Ola, Paridhi Lohani, Paresh Sangal, Priyesh Gothwal, Prerna Khandelwal, Rajasekhar, Rajarshi Das, Rohan Suri, Riya Gholya, Santhosh Sadanand, Saswati Saha, Sahil Juneja, Sneha Raghavan, Sonam Chaturvedi, Sonu Kumar, Spiti Uday, Sulekha U. Sharma, Soumya Yadav, Sumit Kumar, Swati Kumari, Suvani Suri and several others whose names we could not figure out from their email for their generous contributions to the fundraiser to make the colloquium possible.