Arts

Zain Ahmed, Artistic Director, National Academy of Performing Arts(NAPA), Pakistan, feels that theatre can act as a medium to help bridge differences and reconcile conflicts between India and Pakistan. Art and culture joins hearts of individuals living on both sides of the border.
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Pakistani theatre enthralls Indian audience

Gill Robertson is a theatre maker with over 20 years experience of creating world class, award winning theatre for young audiences. In 1999 Gill founded Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and since then has produced over 20 shows for children and young people which have toured to schools, village halls and theatres across Scotland. 
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• “Children are fantastic, with imaginative, great minds"

Jessie Curell,  is an ex Team Leader and Education Specialist for the National Film Board of Canada. With a university background in Anthropology, Communications and Media Production, her Master’s Degree thesis project was a four-month Canadian workshop tour teaching teenage girls feminism, media literacy and media production. Delivering workshops to youth is a passion for Jessie, sharing with them skills and techniques which they can apply to any medium they wish to put into action.
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Digital Stories can make students creative and enhance media literacy - Jessie Curell

Recently German Painter, Rolf Nikel organized an art exbhition "Beats on Brushes” at Academy of Fine Arts , Kolkata. Rolf explains his work “My works are actually not pictures in a classical sense of images. They are very real as what they are.
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Art does not have a goal oriented reason- Rolf Nikel

You have seen them on the news and TV channels. Those  beautiful and elaborately painted trucks on the roads ofPakistan, where every inch of the vehicle is decorated lavishly. Now Three Pakistani artists- Haider Ali, Mumtaz Ahmedand Md. Iqbal, all professional “truck artists” from Karachi is decorating the Hatibagan Nabinpalli pandal with theirunique ‘truck art’ this Puja. The idea of housing the Goddess inside the truck-pandal first came to Gopal Poddar,  Durga Puja theme consultant.  
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They use panels of trucks as the canvas for art

Since 20ll, the Freedom Theatre’s Freedom Bus has engaged Palestinians and people from abroad to engage in the cultural movement to address Israel’s  practice of settler colonialism, military occupation and structural apartheid. Writer, educator and drama therapist Ben Rivers speaks to Abhijit  Ganguly on  the sidelines of an interactive session organized by Modern Academy of Continuing Education (MACE).  
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Freedom Bus: A Journey through Palestine

Binodini Dasi has been Bengali theatre’s first and perhaps the most versatileleading lady ever. During a little over a decade she acted in some50 plays. She   became famous for her role as  Nemai  in  Chaitanya  Lila. Directed by Girish Chandra Ghose, one of the pioneers of Bengalistage, the play opened a new chapter in the history of Bengali theatre.

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An Italian dramatist plans a movie on Binodini Dasi

Before she came to India, India used to appear to her as a place swathed in purple. After she arrived here, she started India in blue. As Saori Kanda, apainter from Japan, says “I realized blue is the colour of peace. And India to me stands for peace.”
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To her, India is a land of the 'Blue'

Vassilis is Artistic Director at Eilissos a company for culture.”Eilissos" micro-art space is the seat of the homonymous non- profit organization founded in 2006 by group of artists, scientists and entrepreneurs to overall research, study, preservation and dissemination of art in various manifestations.
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There is a constant exchange between image, text, movement and sound- Vassilis Kritikos

Giancarla Munoz Reyes is a creative and independent character sculptor from Bolivia. Whether in the dynamics of the brass movement, or in the soft lines of the stone, or the expression of a face made in mud that seems to speak in silence. Since 1984, she has participated in individual and collective exhibitions at: Mexico City, Mexico / Faenza, Italy / Galicia, Spain /Miami, USA / Florianopolis, Brazil / Beijing, China / Asuncion, Paraguay / Majorca, Spain / and several cities in Bolivia.
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Do not be afraid... If you love what you do, you must do it

Making crafts and playing with puppets are often considered childish, since they are used by children to create their own worlds. But adults retain the desire to create and control even after they abandon these pastimes. It is possible that all the broken motions of historical progress—inventions, discoveries, technology—reflect that desire.

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People and Puppets perform together

Bryan was the first African American to be voted “Best Writer” at the Danville High School and excelled in athletics. At 23, he made his first film “Colored Black”, a documentary about how young African Americans view themselves in comparison to other races that was soon followed by another documentary “The Bottoms” (Urban renewal and Remembering A Neighbourhood), in which he worked with the accomplished filmmaker Mike Boedicker. 
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Social issues have always been and will always be a big part of my life

Recently, Studio 21 showcased Outside the Box - Art Exhibition presenting the recent video works by Paul Holmes. The director and film maker showcases his various works, some of which are being exhibited for the first time.   
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Video is still a very new medium in the fine-art field. There are no real rules and that makes us as the practitioner’s very privileged- Paul Holmes

The Sorbs of Western Slavic origin have been living in regions of Eastern Germany long before Germany as a nation state existed. Overcoming numerous obstacles like the terror aimed at them during the Third Reich, they have endured and are still holding onto their own language, rights, and traditions even today.

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Preserving Sorbian identity through the lens of time

The spirit of Nagas came alive at the Indian Museum, Kolkata. A photo exhibition of the Konyak tribe of Nagaland, whowere known for their tattoos on their face and hands, was exhibited at the Asutosh Centenary Hall. The photoexhibition by renowned Dutch photographer Peter Bos, who is also a collaborator in the research of Phejin Konyak, threwlight on the head hunters of the tribe. 

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Reliving lost Konyak customs

Sherino Mokhtar is an independent artist specializing in site specific art for architectural walls and environments, including painted murals, mosaic murals. She is expert at architectural trompe l'oeil painting, and a versatile and highly skilled restorer with experience in restoring rare books.
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"Keep going and please when you try to transfer your experiences transfer it by your heart not your mind" - Sherino Mokhtar

Mauro John Capece is a film director, expert in digital productions, pioneer in innovative film making, and film funding. He directs and produces features and documentaries, music videos, live music and commercials. His works have won awards at major national and international film festivals.
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"I think that technology in cinema is changing very fast but the techniques to craft images (the language) are the same" - Mauro John Capece

Actress, dancer, and author, Corinna Coroneo was born in Galatina in Salento, Italy. She studied classical and modern dance for fifteen years. In 2003, she graduated from DAMS in Bologna with a thesis on the film “Querelle”, an adaptation of the famous novel by J.Genet. 
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"Criticism, positive or negative, must always be seen as a gift" - Corinna Coroneo

Francesca Fini is an Italian artist working with mixed media, video and per- formance art. Her live projects, always addressing social and political issues, are mixed with lo-fi technology, homemade interaction design devices, live audio and video. She speaks to Abhijit Ganguly on the sidelines of Ghosts of Shakespeare Festival, 2014, organized by the Arshinagar project.
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Boosting creativity through technology

Jana Sanskriti was started as an experiment about 30 years ago by a group of dedicated people who saw it as an effective means of social change. Later, they came into contact with Augusto Boal of Brazil, the father of Theatre of the Oppressed, and Jana Sanskriti - Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed in Kolkata – was born. Today Jana Sanskriti has more than 30 teams in West Bengal alone most of whom are agricultural labourers.
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• “I learned a lot from them in Jana Sanskriti”- Alvim Cossa 

For Isabel Corthier, photography is an interpretation of reality. A freelance photographer, Isabel Corthier works in Belgium and abroad in documentary photography. Her work has featured on the covers of Caritas International, Doctors without Borders, North-South, Klasse and Content magazine.
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She captures people in all their moods

The Italian Cultural Institute – New Delhi & Mumbai and the Arshinagar Project performed Made In Ilva by Instabili Vaganti in Kolkata. The act is a masterpiece of physical theatre exploring the impact of the biggest steelworks in Europe on the environment and surrounding population. From an original script based on real life testimonies and poems from the workers at the Ilva steel plant which had caused severe damage to the environment by emitting toxic gases and causing deaths from cancer and leukemia.
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Physical theatre gives voice to workers anguish

Recently Dutch photographer Marjan Versluijs- Helder  had an exhibition of her work at the Chitrakoot Art Gallery, Kolkata. The title of the exhibition was 'the Netherlands meet India'. Pictures taken in India was combined with pictures expressing the same theme, taken in the Netherlands.. Indian pictures were taken in December 2009 in and around Kolkata. Dutch pictures in the Netherlands on different locations (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Vianen and others). 
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“Develop a unique look at things. Do not try to copy others, because that won’t work”

Instabili Vaganti was back to India to perform one of the  most symbolic work produced within the Project Rags of Memory, after the work session led in Shantiniketan on September 2015. An original and experimental composition, RAGS OF MEMORY is a play based on physical and vocal actions, live music, and video-projections. The stage is set with three circles of light filled with symbolic elements: rice, soil, stones, water, fire.
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From "Rags to Riches"...of the soul

Sati is a facilitator of Resonant Subbody Butoh. A student of Rhizome Lee, she has worked collaborating with Ten Pen Chii (Germany with Yumiko Yoshioka), 14th Bak tun (Canada with Gessuri Gaitan). Recently, The Alliance Francaise du Bengale, Subbody Butoh School, "Katha' Kali"& The Arshinagar Project organized "Resonating" with Kali & The Sick Dancing Princess - a performance by a group of contemporary Butoh artists from Subbody Butoh School & Janardan Ghosh.
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“Butoh is revolution, guiding beyond concept and ego. Butoh is the expansion or depth behind everyday life”

Joel Bergner is a muralist/ street artist and educator from the US, whose work focuses on issues of culture, social justice, and telling the stories of those who have been ignored or misunderstood by society. U.S.Consulate General in collaboration with Banglanatak.com  
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"I enjoy watching young people gain confidence in themselves and make positive connections with their peers and adults in their community through the act of collaborative art making." - Joel Bergner

Sabine Himmelsbach is the artistic director of the House of Electronic Arts Basel (HeK). HeK is dedicated to digital culture and the new art forms of the information age. It is a place for creative and critical discourse on the aesthetic, socio-political and economic impact of media technologies. HeK shows contemporary art that explores and configures new technologies; it promotes an aesthetic practice that uses information technology as a medium, makes it vividly accessible and actively intervenes in its processes. Recently she gave a talk at the  Experimenter Kolkata.
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“Digital art can have a manifold of appearances - either being in the digital realm or reflect the digital within the analog world.”

Many scholars believe that puppet theatre originated in India and it is from here that this art, which embraces epic themes, travelled to other Asian countries.  Puppet theatres of India were awakened to the immense possibility of puppetry being used as a powerful means of dramatic expression. Of late, new blood and talent has brought new life to the old and dry bones of puppetry.
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"Puppetry often lives at the bottom of the hierarchy of the performing arts"