Disrupting coloniality, one game at a time
The
ReverseForward project is an intensive, multi-day programme led by
Thomas Lilge,
Vera Marušić,
Laxmi Khanolkar, and
Amarnath Praful. Over the course of an intensive
GameLab, a diverse group of people have attempted to reimagine decolonial praxis in culture producers - both institutions and individuals, the role of play and narrative strategies, and social game design.
ReverseForward is a process-based lab involving people over a period of 6 months leading to a 5-day GameLab in New Delhi in May 2023 consisting of various elements leading up to a 2-day hackathon, and a final Townhall open to the general public.
© Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan
Sunday, 21 May 2023 | Open to all
Panel | Reframing Histories through Games | 12:30 - 14:00
Dhruv Jani, Laxmi Khanolkar, Afrah Shafiq, Thomas Lilge | Moderated by Arvind Lodaya
Play, in the form of Games, holds a discursive potential to convey and influence social worlds. This panel will deliberate on three key aspects: the politics of game design and development, transmission of ideological values, and construction of social reality, as sites that produce and reinforce narratives. in this context, we ask: how can games be employed to investigate, articulate, and disseminate the complexities of colonial temporalities?
© Arvind Lodaya
Arvind Lodaya is an alumnus of NID Ahmedabad and has worked extensively in innovation, design, and branding. He held the responsibility of Dean [Research] at Srishti and was the first HP Labs-Srishti Research Chair. He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His current interests include wicked problems, impact entrepreneurship / social design innovation, design spirituality, and saving the planet.
Panel | Decolonising Culture Praxis | 15:30 - 17:00
Vera Marušić, Amarnath Praful, Sajan Mani, Aurora Rodono | Moderated by Sarover Zaidi
Colonial residues in India are evident across its socio-cultural, political, and economic fabric; investigating the contemporary decolonial discourse and its applications, both in individual and infrastructural tendencies, has been of key interest to culture producers from post-colonial worlds. This panel will study how creative and critical impulses can coincide with and challenge decolonial praxis; with emphasis on the emerging and alternative modalities of decolonizing cultures.
© Sarover Zaidi
Sarover Zaidi is a philosopher and a social anthropologist. She works at the intersections of critical theory, anthropology, art, architecture, and material culture studies. She has extensively worked on religious architecture and urbanism in the city of Bombay, and currently co-runs a site on writing the city called Chiragh Dilli. Previously, she has worked on rural development, with a focus on health, education, and women’s rights across India, and she currently works on religious iconography and modernist architecture in South Asia. Zaidi currently teaches at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Sonipat, India.
Readings | 15:15 & 17:45
Vikramaditya Sahai, Aditi Nagrath
© Alok V Menon
Vikramaditya Sahai is a postgraduate in political science from the University of Delhi. They have previously worked as faculty at the Gender Studies Department, Ambedkar University, Delhi and as a consultant on a project to study non-normative sexuality and gender housed at the Advanced Centre for Women Studies, TISS, Bombay. They are interested in sex, feeling, and the structure and narrative of living in their relation with forms of sociality, law and politics.
© Diksha Gupta
Aditi Nagrath completed her Master’s in Clinical Psychology in 2018, pursuing a training in expressive arts therapy and working to build access to arts in education. Currently living in New Delhi, she works as an education counsellor and uses her free time to teach and write poetry. Her work has appeared in Noble/Gas Qtrly, Monstering Mag, among others. Her first collection of poetry, Beyond Survival, was published in 2015 through Condensed Matter Bindery & Press.
Performance | 18:00 - 19:00
Nrithya Pillai accompanied by M S Ananthashree
© Nrithya Pillai
Nrithya Pillai is a dancer, dance composer, singer, writer, speaker, and dance instructor who proudly claims her hereditary nattuvanar-devadasi lineage. Artistic Director of Rajarathnalaya, a Bharathanatyam institution founded by her maternal grandfather, she consciously preserves and reanimates the rich repertoire and the teaching and choreographic practices of her celebrated ancestors. Epitomizing the teacher-nattuvanar of the hereditary paramparais and carving out her own space as a performer with impeccable training and vast creativity, Nrithya nevertheless represents a new kind of artistic and intellectual engagement with the troubled history of Bharatanatyam in the long 20th century. She vigorously challenges the power relationships and ideologies that made the form unavailable to women of her community and advocates fiercely for the restoration of credit for Bharatanatyam technique, repertoire, and philosophy to the hereditary Isaivellala community of practitioners.
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Dastaan LIVE will be performing
'Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein - a Rock Opera' | 19:00-20:00
About
Kabir’s message of love and unity is vitally important in the current discordant times and we feel it important to revive the music of M.K. Raina's seminal play
'Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein', not just as an archive but in a new vibrant format that can reach out to new audiences. This show re-interprets the music of the play, retaining its core aesthetics and updating the arrangement and instrumentation for modern sensibilities, working with some of the best musicians and theatre practitioners in Delhi.
'Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein - a Rock Opera' premiered at the Mahinda Kabira Festival 2021 and was a resounding success.
© Dastaan LIVE
Concept
‘Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein’, an iconic play written by the renowned author Bhishen Sahni, is a fictionalised account of the life of Kabir Das, the 14th century saint poet and explores his philosophy while critiquing societal issues like communalism and the caste system. The play was brought to life by noted theatre director, actor and cultural activist M.K. Raina in 1982. The performance was so successful that it ran for over a decade. One of the most striking things about this performance was how the poetry of Kabir was brought to life by the brilliant music composed by the Late Panchanan Pathak. Through meticulous research, M.K. Raina incorporated many rare verses of Kabir (and Raidas), many of which had not been sung before. M.K. Raina and Baan G (Dastaan LIVE) came together to reinterpret the visionary music of the play resulting in the creation of
'Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein - a RocK Opera'.
Creators
M.K. Raina
M.K. Raina is a renowned Indian theatre personality, actor and cultural activist. He graduated in 1970 from N.S.D. with the Best Actor award. He has directed over a 100 plays across the world, directed fiction and non-fiction films and conducted numerous workshops across the country. He has been part of both alternative and mainstream cinema, having acted in films like 27 Down, Genesis, Satah Se Uthta Aadmi, Taare Zameen Par to name a few. He has been awarded the Sanskriti Award for Theatre (1980), Best Director (Sahitya Kala Parishad, 1982) for Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein, Sahitya Kala Parishad Samman (1986-1987), Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1995), B.V. Karanth Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre (National School of Drama, 2008), etc, Raina is currently working on his first book, a memoir titled ‘Before I Forget’.
© Dastaan LIVE
Performed by Dastaan LIVE
Dastaan LIVE is a art-rock project that brings together the world of the aural and the visual to deliver a one-of-a-kind experience for audiences. The project's first show, 'Surviving Democracy' was conceived by Anirban Ghosh and Sumant Balakrishnan in 2016. Since early 2018, Dastaan LIVE has carved a niche for themselves in the alternative arts space. The project constantly strives to discover new ways to make this project increasingly immersive for our audiences , creating spaces for dialogue and interpretations and compelling people above all, to think.
Concept: M.K Raina + Baan G (Dastaan LIVE)
| Creative Producer: Anirban Ghosh (Baan G)
| Executive Producers: Anirban Ghosh (Baan G), Anant Raina, M.K Raina
| Director: M.K Raina
| Musicians / Performers: Anirban Ghosh (Bass Guitar / Spoken Word), Anant Raina (Percussions), Funkesh (Drums), Sudheer Rikhari (Vocals), Jagtinder Singh Sidhu (Vocals), Mohammed Faheem (Spoken Word / Vocals), Anjali Raina (Spoken Word / Vocals), Amar Sukesh (Guitars), Pranay (Guitars), Nikhil Vasudevan (Drums)
| Visuals & Documentation: Ikroop Sandhu / Anant Raina
| Lights / Stage Design / Live Projections: Abhinav Khetarpal
| Produced by: W.I.P. Labs
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