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Radical Housing and Socially-Engaged Art

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12 June 2014

After spending a day together the artists at Gram are getting to understand each other better. The residency has artists from Dhaka (Bangladesh), Karanchi (Pakistan), Serbia, Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Baroda, Assam, Jaipur. Gram as a residency this time is working towards setting new milestones in the field of visual art and activism.  The artists have decided to spend first few days of the residency in understanding the local village custom and mannerism before raiding the village with urban understandings on this subject. The artist in this residency will be working in such a way that their ideas spread throughout the village in an organic manner. This time that the artists spend in interacting with people is the first step towards bridging the gap of being an outsider and insider in the village. This will also help the artists decide the language of the art practice that each one of them will later adapt. The focus of the residency is to initiate dialogues on Ecology, Sanitation and Irrigation. The artists have been visiting door to door asking questions about sanitation, health, water and agriculture. For this purpose questions have been prepared on the same which have been translated in English Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi. The questionnaire will trigger discussions and debates on the subject of how each household can handle issues of ‘Eco-Sani-Irri’. During the course of the questionnaire issues of recycling the waste and saving money will also be raised.

A seed takes its own time to time to sprout, sapling its own grow, stem takes its own time to leaf and flower its own time blossom.  We feel that for a project as sensitive as this every event and activity must be tailor made, custom designed for Paradsingha. To make it happen progressively in an organic way all that we need is to cultivate and nurture new ideas gradually. The initiative that the artists take is not mere installing of their ideas in the village rather the endeavor is to engrain these within the village culture that will continue for years to come.