“To participate in the Archive” invites to consider the Archive, as a narrative, a repository, a state-tool, a fact, a fiction, both as a site and trope for artistic inquiry and art production. Projects that are produced as research or interventions into existing archives, or make new collections that can be archived, will be considered. Artists looking at theorizing everyday through archives and the engagement of communities and sites ignored or excluded from conventional art/ archiving are encouraged to apply. We will address the questions around authorship, organization, access, intentions and socio-cultural roles of some public and personal archives in the historical present.

At this residency we look at the role of the artist as a participant, interventionist, collaborator, rather than a heroic individual. We will work towards production of art objects, while also question the fundamental social nature of their making. Intersectionality plays an important role in the content we produce; hence the artists are expected to be in tune with contemporary matters of the body, labor, the commons, democracy, and technology among other urban ecologies. 

To frame this Open Call and Residency, TIFA has invited artist-curator Vidisha Saini who would also be in-residence with the practitioners to offer critique, interventions and a curatorial framework. Vidisha’s practice engages with artist processes (theory+ praxis+ ethics+ empathy), conceptual art and pedagogy, she is interested in the queering of hegemony.