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Coriolis Effect 2015

The Coriolis Effect residency program was initiated to activate the social, economic and cultural relationship and historical exchange which exists between India and the African continent. Coriolis Effect not only uses the present context of 21st century migrations, but equally refers to various moments of exchange through history.

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OPEN STUDIO DAY: 28th August, 2015, 6:30 PM onward

The evening featured live performance events from 7:15 pm onward.

‘Coriolis Effect: Currents across India and Africa’ was a project which sought to explore and navigate the social, economic and cultural relationship as well as the historical tradition of exchange which exists between India and Africa. In part, the rationale behind Coriolis Effect was conceptualised in response to KHOJ’s immediate neighborhood of Khirkee Village Extension: a dense urban-village environment in New Delhi that has been home to a stream of immigrants from within the Indian subcontinent, as well as migrants from countries such as Cameroon, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Afghanistan, and Nepal, to name a few. This hotbed of cultural difference has long been a source of friction between residents, often erupting into acts of discrimination-based violence. This project grew out of a series of encounters and conversations which took place in and around KHOJ through 2014.

The project invited participants to unpack notions of geography, memory, cultural exchange as well as tension and fear of the ‘other’, through history. The Coriolis Effect not only used the present context of 21st century migrations, but equally referred to various moments of exchange through history; from the recent past of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 20th century, to the cultural relationship shared by Indians and Africans from the 1st century AD onwards.

Specific areas of interest for this project included ‘identity’- whether informed through ideas of race, ethnicity, and cultural difference, or informed through notions of ‘belonging’, within the changing context of what constitutes a nation, and what delineates a city, in today’s burgeoning landscape. Identity could also be construed through understanding of gendered and sexualized spaces, in particular the presentation of ‘masculinity’ as a trope of fear and aggression in the context of racial difference.  The project also investigated the presence of ‘memory’ through a re-collection of this shared history and the remnants of this history in physical and intangible forms alike. A final point of departure for this project included political imaginings, as informed through allegiances created in the late 20th century, following the period of the Cold War and for the duration of the Non-Aligned Movement.


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