Srishti Live 2019 — A Glimpse

Although the term is contemporary, Public Art is as old as man. Monuments, memorials and civic statuary are perhaps the oldest and most obvious form of officially sanctioned public art, and it could be said that architectural sculpture and even architecture itself fulfills the definition of public art.

Public Art is a multifaceted medium of expression. It can be used as a way to communicate ideas for a community to a larger audience in a public space, be it state sponsored or in reaction to systemic oppression. Secondly, it can be a means for place making, in that it is a contextual response in a neighborhood through local initiatives. For example, an artist or design student can find his authentic self in relation to a context, such as a community or place in and around a particular metro station. And along with this, Public Art can be a medium to provide pedagogic space for students to learn in the public sphere, thereby extending learning beyond institutions. A good example is that of the Srishti Live festival where over three hundred students spent a month at the metro stations working with artists from around the world.

Srishti Live 2019 was a month-long project in which students of the Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology worked with artists of international repute. Upon completing their projects, the students showcased their work at Bangalore’s metro stations and transformed them from places of commute to spaces where passersby could pause and reflect. Visually appealing and thought-provoking, the festival was organized by Art in Transit (AIT).

The Rajajinagar Metro Station acquired a colorful hue thanks to Lavanya Mani’s ‘Fabric Ecologies’ project, which was themed around thrifting and used textiles as a medium. Her students used various types of natural dyes such as scraped out rust from old discarded metal objects lying in scrap shops to dye cloth, thereby discovering sustainable alternatives to chemical dyes.

The dyed cloth installations took form in three parts :

Three clusters of meaningfully constructed wire & fabric sculptures that depict tree clusters occupying man-made spaces, printed with rusted nails to suggest man-made construction that has taken over the spaces that trees once inhabited;

Panels of dyed cloth descending down a staircase, that depict layers of damage done by pollution to the ecology of lakes;

Dyed fabric soft sculptures of endangered birds (Nilgiri Blue Robin, Yellow Throated Bulbul, Black Bellied Tern, Great Indian Bustard, Indian Vulture, and Red Headed Vulture), an attempt to simulate what public spaces could have been like had we found a way to coexist with these species instead of building over their homes.

Italian artist & filmmaker Kim Noce and her students at Rajajinagar metro station, shooting stop motion animation films for the project ‘Miniature Portraits’. ‘Miniature Portraits’ is a series of short animated documentaries that look at Bangalore through the lens of time, as a witness to its ever changing nature, reflected in the city’s sign boards, bookstores and food.

‘Toybrids’, an installation by Siddharth Karawal displayed at Rajajinagar station, highlighted the perils of modern growth models and the dangers to Planet Earth. By fusing attributes of different life forms and creating a new life model, the students became proficient in the art of biomimicry and learnt to think out of the box.

‘Bugged’, based on the popular theme ‘You Are What You Eat’, is a frog that develops physical features of all its prey ( mosquitoes, dragonflies, moths and bugs ) : moth antennae, dragonfly wings and tail and eyes of a fly. The sense of eeriness that the installation evoked was not lost on the audience.

Cybird’, a Kingfisher that has developed a metallic exterior to adapt to the toxic waste of the Bellandur lake, and not the delicate and colourful features it would normally have. The harsh conditions in the lake have clearly forced it to transform into a cold, almost lifeless bird.

The animal kingdom has evolved over centuries for the purpose of catching prey and shielding itself from predators. The ‘Devil’s Halo’ brilliantly displayed how animal life might adapt to combat the biggest predator — man. This monstrosity, in Bangalore’s bougainvillaea flowers, is gifted with multiple abilities.

It can slither like a snake, crawl like an earthworm, climb as fast as a monkey and fly as fast as a hawk. It is also fortified with poisonous quills and exoskeleton. With venomous webs to ensnare its prey, the Devil’s Halo is the Spider-man of the animal kingdom.

In ‘Boxtopia’, the students managed to show how different species, with nothing in common, may be forced to crossbreed and create monsters to cope in a futuristic world worsened by climate change and harsh conditions.

Japanese artist Risa Sato laid bare her creative work at Vijaynagar metro station for people to soak in and appreciate. Known for disrupting order by placing an unknown object amidst monotonous backgrounds, she successfully placed an inflatable, ventilated material that was stitched by the students, at one end of the metro station. The object had a zip for people to enter.

Risa Sato’s Students Inside The Inflated Material

An Aerial View Of Risa Sato’s ‘Our Scenery” Project

Commuters Examining The Inflated Material

Comprising twenty students, Risa Sato’s team carefully monitored the impact of this experiment on the surroundings. Commuters were eager to know why the object was shaped like a vada, a popular South Indian snack. Many entered the space by unzipping it and were curious about its contents. Some even suggested converting it into a swimming pool! The artist helped initiate a conversation about Bangalore’s disappearing lakes through her exhibit in the process.

Filmmaker Priya Sen Interacting With Her Students For The ‘Dislocations’ Project

Noted filmmaker Priya Sen and her batch of twenty students put together a project called ‘Dislocations’, that is about disruptive experiments with nonfiction film practices, around de-stabilizing ideas of place and form.

It resulted in three films.’ Mat Bato Insaan Ko’, made using visuals of newspaper clippings and the milling crowds everywhere, raised the issue of identity in the context of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the NRC. ‘Agla Station’ captured the essence of anticipation, loneliness, anxiety and confusion when travelling to a new place. ‘Untitled(A delusional illusion)’ narrates the protagonist’s childhood sense of mooring “that she never had”, in a place like Vijaynagar where time has stood still, with a quiet urban neighbourhood. The film used everyday images of footage of objects, houses, streets and life in the locality of Vijaynagar. The film provided the protagonist with a sense of connectedness that the artist always longed for. In a sense, her desire for the ordinariness and rootedness of everyday life was an illusion that turned real with the film.

Students working on a mural about women’s safety under the guidance of feminist-artist Indu Antony, as part of the project “Cecelia’ed”, outside Vijaynagar metro station. The project was named after a seventy five year old sexual assault survivor Cecilia from Bengaluru, whose struggle moved Indu Antony to the point where she decided to make Cecilia the core of the project. Also on display at the metro were comics of Cecilia, the superwoman who comes to the rescue of victims of sexual harassment in a lightening, and dolls of the character which are used to explain to children the difference between a good touch and bad touch.

Art in Transit Crew assisting the students of Indu Antony’s project in setting up participatory activities for commuters, to gather information about women’s safety at Vijaynagar metro station. Indu Antony’s murals hope to create awareness of and suggest ways to improve the safety of women in public spaces

UK artist Daniel Saul’s montage, called ‘India’s First Driverless Car, is a dystopian installation. His exhibit showed newspaper headlines screaming two pieces of news, namely ”India’s First Driverless Car in Bangalore” and ”Auto Drivers on Strike”. In addition, an interactive display of cups using which the public can listen to conversations about self-driving cars. The audience could hear people concerned about the consequences of the new invention (such as who would be held responsible for an accident) and so on.

Commuters Viewing Daniel Saul’s “India’s First Driverless Car” Installation at Cubbon Park Metro Station

Daniel Saul’s second set of exhibits consisted of a face scanner and two screens, one showing a shoal of fish disturbed by an intruder, and the second a group of sparrows leaving a city. The face scanner is harsh, bereft of emotions and converts all human attributes to digital data, and not surprisingly accepts or rejects you. It also showcases how there may be no room for negotiations as AI replaces humans working in call centers. And what happens to humans who are much more than flesh and bones and whose thought processes escape the scanner? And those who are eternally playing with ideas about change and difference? Does the scanner have no patience or is it a case of a technology without a heart?

The other two screens representing the unsettling of fish in placid waters and the flight of sparrows symbolize how human beings might have to make way for technology in the near future. These installations by Daniel Saul are relevant to the India of today over the government’s push towards digitization.

The interdisciplinary and interactive exhibits at Cubbon Park Metro Station, Entry B by Annu Mathew and her students, working on the project “The Unremembered — Indian Soldiers of WWII”, highlighting the forgotten stories of the Indian soldiers of World War 2, and placing them in the context of India’s larger history. The students deconstructed over twenty hours of archived film footage, more than fifty photographs, and played voice overs of military veterans and the families of those who participated in WW2.

The exhibits at the metro stations succeeded in arousing the curiosity of the commuters. Many were intrigued and impressed by the futuristic installations that the students put up. Others described the performance-based artwork as a great way of losing inhibitions. Some even actively participated in giving suggestions. The students could not have asked for more!

Srishti Live was organized and facilitated by Art In Transit, a public pedagogic initiative set up by the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Along with the consortium of Srishti faculty, researchers and students, the AIT team has used its experience in public art to ensure the thumping success of the annual festival.

This month long engagement and event was the kickoff for the Metro Neighborhood Initiative (MNI). MNI, supported by United Way of Bengaluru (UWBe), in partnership with Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology, bridges the people and strengthens the bond with their locality and city at large. From exhibitions revisiting Bengaluru’s forgotten past to socially driven community activities at metro stations, it intends to celebrate the uniqueness of that neighborhood and, in the process, build a sense of belonging among the local residents.

The challenge before the MNI today is to transform popular public spaces into those having a dual identity — the functional and the cultural — with regard to the relationship the space has with people. These spaces can also be used for the local community to bond and build a sense of ownership.