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BEYOND THE EDGE, KOLKATA: ERASURES AND RESISTANCES A PRECURSOR TO THE BENGAL BIENNALE CURATED BY OINDRILLA MAITY SURAI KOLKATA, INDIA 2024 Venues: Putiary Brajamohan Tewary Institution and various public spaces near Tolly's Canal (Adi Ganga) The Adi Ganga-Tolly Nullah is an old channel of the Ganges flowing across the southern visages of urban Kolkata. It moves through the fringes of the city and finally meets the Bay of Bengal. | |
 A NOTE ON THE SERIES পাট, PAAT (JUTE): MEMORY, RESISTANCE AND ERASURE A DECOLONIAL INSTALLATION পাট, Paat (Jute): Memory, Resistance and Erasure is part of Sonia Mehra Chawla’s ongoing expansive new project with a focus on the history, contemporary crisis and future of the Jute Industry in Bengal. At the centre of the narrative are Kolkata (Calcutta) in West Bengal, India, where the artist was born and raised, and Dundee in Scotland, often called ‘Juteopolis, (accurately reflecting the extraordinary dominance of one economic activity in the city). Both cities and their environs and hinterlands prospered and thrived by the extraordinary dominance of the jute industry; both were devastated by jute; both were landscapes of the Empire. Sonia’s research objective is two-fold. She uses the globally marketed and consumed fibre, jute (Corchorus) as a trope to examine botanical histories and politics, and the complex socio-economic history of the working class and labouring population in colonial, post-colonial and contemporary Bengal. Secondly, she activates the notion of the material as a tool of resistance. Archives are often spaces of gaps and silences. Sometimes this is due to historical and internalized racism, classism, sexism, and ignorance of marginalized genders and sexualities. The project critically reflects upon archival silences and addresses questions such as- What is missing? Whose perspectives are not represented? What could be the reasons for these archival silences? Is there evidence for the missing perspective elsewhere (in another archives? in the community?) Employing an intersectional and multidisciplinary approach, this body of work examines the multifaceted relationship between colonial power and scientific knowledge, providing insights into botanical politics and conflicts, the often-overlooked histories of colonial capitalism, and the challenges of our possible future(s). Through her work, Sonia questions and destabilizes colonial legacies, constructs and entanglements, exploring new ways of seeing through embodied memories and labouring bodies. In her article ‘Future Imaginaries: For when the world feels like heartbreak’, historian Heather Davis talks about the re-imagining of a future where social and ecological justice are intertwined. She says, ‘Colonialism has always relied upon the complete transformation of the biosphere, the atmosphere and hydrosphere. Racial and environmental justice cannot be separated, but are part of an entangled matrix of capitalism and colonialism’. Such processes and legacies resonate strongly with recent discussions on the notion and controversies of the Anthropocene. The term ‘Anthropocene’ signifies the emergence of a new geological era resulting from human activities, but it is equally founded on haunting colonial legacies, proliferating environmental violences, the systematic erasure of legacies of violence and exclusion, including the erasure of racialized and gendered power dynamics. Contributing to recent discussions on the complexities of the Anthropocene and the dilemmas of the Plantationocene, this research might help visualize and envision more nuanced ways of re-counting and understanding plantation regimes, their afterlives and the various forms of resistance.      | |
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পাট, Paat (Jute): The Labouring Body Film in high definition with sound Filmed on location at the Hastings Jute Mill, Rishra, Hooghly, West Bengal. Duration: 16 minutes, 20 seconds Started in 1875 with 230 looms by the Birkmyre Brothers, the Hastings Jute Mill was built on the sprawling estate of East India Company’s first Governor- General of Fort William in Bengal. Today, the Hastings Jute Mill remains one of India’s oldest operational jute mills. Like the over-a-century old Lancashire boiler – the 40-feet signature brick chimney and the associated early industrial legacy of the country – the East India Company remnants, and a wide jetty and the airbase bunkers are now witness to the historical vicissitudes. The over 3,000-worker-strong mill currently runs two shifts. Though surviving the odds of higher raw jute prices and lower realisations from the government orders, quintessentially Hastings represents the gloomy present of the ‘golden’ fibre textiles industry. (With excerpts from, ‘Hastings Jute Mill — rich past, fraying future’, by Jayanta Mallick, published in the Hindu Businessline, 2018)       |
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| Beyond the Edge, Kolkata: Erasures and Resistances curated by Oindrilla Maity Concept Note Situated at the southern edge of the city of Kolkata, the Thakurpukur-Haridevpur area is part of the South 24 Parganas, a district that stretches to the Bay of Bengal. The site is part of a major riverine system: the Adi Ganga (a circuitous route that ends in the Bay of Bengal) and the Tolly’s Canal (a colonial invention of the 19th c, a more pragmatic and shorter route connecting the Bay of Bengal to avoid the Adi Ganga)—the banks of which stand witness to a spectacular r cultural amalgamation. Dotted with countless historical architecture—a synchronous coexistence of churches, mosques, temples, the Brahma Samaj house, a 19th c residential building of freedom fighters and members of the secret society (the Anushilan Bhavan), and the Bratachari village (a movement for spiritual and social improvement which aimed to raise the self-esteem and national awareness of people of undivided India) *—the area is steeped in history. Once a thriving economic hub in the 17th c, the southern edge of the city turned into a dream town of a migrant community from Bangladesh who sought refuge in India during the Partition, subsequently, converting into an industrial belt. The area is marked with several factories ranging from electronic equipment and the Bengali film industry and was a major hub of Naxalite supporters in Bengal. It has numerous educational institutions, notably the Jadavpur University in the neighbourhood (an educational institution, which challenged the hegemony of the British establishment). Situated within the historical fabric of commerce, transnational trade, and geopolitical changes (the Sundarbans that fringe the banks of the sea is threatened by the rising water levels and are constantly combating landslide), the area can be identified within the relationship of a push and pull of modernity and industrialization; of politics, education and culture. Despite its remarkable history, this piece of geography has almost always been at the margin, often overlooked by the city proper. And yet its inhabitants have infallibly exhibited a strong cultural interest and retained their identity. Their voices have been heard in many forms and expressions, either through creative pursuits or through their history of several protest movements (trade union movements; student uprisings; far-Left radical communist movements) dating back to the 1950s and’60s. Through these myriad expressions the inhabitants—predominantly a community of migrants—have always decisively resisted one thing: obliteration. In a convulsive time like ours, when the voice of dissent is at risk in the country, our very being is eclipsed; the subject is silenced and an indiscriminating obliteration of our nuanced racial histories began to make its presence felt conspicuously—it is time to remember our present and our future. One has to fight by not forgetting. The inhabitants of the area began to feel a strong urge for resuscitating the cultural fabric. From this urgency, an industrial and commercial hub took a turn toward contemporary art, serving a very different purpose. This step taken toward creating a new platform for meaning and knowledge production also aims at research and experimentation toward gathering knowledge about what is there on the horizon. This new space is one where one would address the power of the present and remember not to forget, for, forgetting is the ultimate erasure. In addition, there was a growing concern about identifying and giving form to this new space for, it had to be different from what has already become the normative—‘always a construction, an ideal, rather than an actuality’. It had to be one where one might constantly argue and ‘discuss the changed and changing possibilities for art production as communicationary toolbox and representational politics in the public realm.’ The proposed exhibition is, thus, a reflection of these thoughts. It is aimed at exploring how power acts in various forms (through silence, obliteration, and ignorance) and how the cultural sphere becomes a place of freedom to think and reflect; to pose a challenge to the social order by the construction of values and ideals. It wants to explore how some of the many elements such as shared networks, crops and materials (jute, for instance), thoughts and writings, and minuscule local movements for the resuscitation of the cultural fabric can act as tools for resistance against ways in which erasures act on us. In addition, the exhibition also wants to explore how a nation is made from the unresolved dialectics between the masses; how a subject is formed via its class, caste, and other identities. Orbiting around these ideas, the proposed exhibition invites works of art that would respond to these growing concerns. *initiated by Gurusaday Dutta in 1932 it was a comprehensive programme of physical, mental, and intellectual culture, based on folk traditions of physical exercise, art, dance, drama, music, singing and social service. (Sheikh) Ibid  Images taken by the artist during a site visit to Kolkata ADI GANGA (TOLLY’S CANAL) The project sheds light on the Adi Ganga, one of the most significant streams of the Ganges in its lower course, and narrates how the stream (later Tolly’s Canal) which was once the life line of Kolkata transformed into a mere sewer and was ruthlessly slaughtered with the changing politico-economic interests of the state. Adi Ganga (also known as the Gobindapur Creek and Tolly's Canal), is a stream that was part of the Hooghly River in the Kolkata area of India. It was the main flow of the Hooghly River between the 15th and 17th centuries, but it eventually dried up due to natural causes. History In the 18th century, the British colonial government in India commissioned the excavation of Tolly's Canal by reviving part of the old route of the Adi Ganga. This was done to create a more direct and practical route for oceangoing ships, as the existing route was circuitous and impractical for the movement of country boats during the monsoon season. The excavation of Tolly's Canal had significant ecological and social costs, as it led to the degradation of the Adi Ganga and the loss of the ghats (steps leading down to a body of water) and other cultural landmarks that had been established along its banks. In the 1960s, the water route lost its vitality and the canal transformed into a drain due to the dumping of untreated industrial and domestic waste into it. Today, the Adi Ganga is heavily polluted and is a source of environmental and public health concerns for the surrounding communities. Beyond the Edge, Kolkata Participating Artists 1. Aishwarya Das (installaion) 2. Anupam Saikia (performance) 3. Birati Samuho (play) 4. Gigi Scaria (single channel video) 5. Inder Salim (performance) 6. Joyraj Bhattacharjee (performance) 7. Madhuja Mukherjee (film) 8. Panihati Patrak (play) 9. Panjeri Artists’ Union (installation/ performance) 10. Pushpamala N (performance) 11. Ram Rahman (photographs) 12. Saikat Surai (video installation) 13. Sharmila Samant (installation) 14. Sonia Mehra Chawla (installation) 15. Srabanti Bhattacharya (performance) 16. Vinayak Bhattacharya (installation) 
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