Serendipity Arts Festival is returning with its fifth edition, presenting an exciting array of inter-disciplinary programmes. Taking place between the 15-23 of December, the festival has collaborated with Svasa Life as its Arts Partner.
Spread across a stretch of Panaji, around the Mandovi river, with the Old GMC Complex at its heart, the festival will continue to uphold its fundamental values of sustainability, inclusivity and accessibility.
The programming for this edition is spread across exhibitions, performances, workshops, public arts, talks, book launches and children’s programming. The projects to be featured within the exhibitions’ segment will see curations by Pramod Kumar KG at the Old GMC Complex, highlighting the world of specialist books on art history of India, through a uniquely immersive exhibition.
Contributing to this segment is also Anjana Somany, who through her curation will enliven the world of craft and its rich traditions of materiality, through space-making – via a project titled Srijan: Space Making Craft Practices of India.
Also on display will be a host of special projects like Four Galleries and Four Voices – a special insertion in the festival programme this year to showcase some current artistic practices from across the region. This will be represented by four galleries: Delhi (Shrine Empire and GallerySKE), Kolkata (Experimenter) and Mumbai (TARQ).
The performance segment, curated by Bickram Ghosh, Ehsaan Noorani, Quasar Thakore Padamsee and Geeta Chandran, will see musical, theatrical and dance practices, inspired traditional and contemporary forms from South Asia.
The music section in the performance segment will also focus on promoting creative voices from across the region by bringing together artists from folk and traditional musical practices. For example, Sufi-Folk Tales will see the coming together of Parvati Kumari and Kalpana Potawary for the first time, in a folk and qawwali jugalbandi.
Good weightage to interdisciplinarity will be given; this will be explored by Quasar Thakore Padamsee and Geeta Chandran through their project. The intersection of dance, drama, music and storytelling will make for a truly interdisciplinary offering.
Focused on the engaging nature of arts that delves deeper and appeals to our senses, Culture and its Stories is a series of projects curated by Mayuri Upadhya. She will showcase a wide range of projects that celebrate the socio-cultural milieu of the region through traditional and contemporary dance.
Topical sessions like The Future of Art with Technology and A Workshop of NFT’s: A Game Changer for the Arts & Creative Economy, will investigate and present the shifting paradigms of arts and its interdisciplinary attributes.
Svasa Life will host a panel discussion that will talk about the Future of Storytelling. Promised to be a stirring conversation, it would unravel how storytelling has evolved through the times via various media, transforming into a 360 degree approach; thereby changing the face of how the audience perceives a ‘story’. On the panel for this discussion are – Anand Gandhi (founder – Memesys Culture Lab, media incubator and filmmaker), Zain Memon (co-founder – Memesys Culture Lab and creator at Shasn – The Political Strategy Board Game) and Shubangi Swarup – best-selling ecological fiction author, along with Mehirr Nath Chopra – vice president, marketing at Svasa Homes.
Serendipity Arts Festival is a public arts outreach initiative that believes in creating points of public engagement with the arts. Being consonant to this idea, the festival has included a few public arts projects across Panjim, which are continuations to its large-scale public art edifices (since the inception of the festival).
Time Repeats by Daku is an experimental and ongoing public art project, which is an exploration of how history repeats itself.
The festival aims to give much-deserved exposure and a collaborative platform to produce a sustainable environment for contemporary arts and crafts. It will highlight the shared cultural heritage of South Asia by building a strong alumni network of artists from across the globe.
In its fifth year, Serendipity Arts Festival plans to explore ways to enhance public engagement with the arts and boost the soft power of the nation, by making art and culture a part of everyday conversations.
Featured Image by Serendipity Arts Festival.
