Refunction

© Lapdiang A. Syiem This project has been conceptualised using elements of digital storytelling to unfold the narrative of a heavily polluted river, ka Wah Umkhrah and its dying tributaries flowing through the city of Shillong in Meghalaya. Coming from a tradition and culture of orality we look at how stories can and in this case of an ecologically threatened water body, be told today, to nudge us inhabitants of the city to pay heed to the abuse and degradation it has been subjected to. Through the performance of memory using poetry, words, sounds and musical compositions including ki phawar and connecting these to visual expression, we have compiled a series of chapters taking the audience on a journey of the past, the blurred lines of memory, the present and the liminal spaces of lost narratives. How can we preserve these disintegrating memories in the world of the digital where memory can always be expanded to a premium package?

As we try to make sense of how the pandemic has affected our lives currently, the digital medium has become a space that we are forced to interact with in almost every aspect of our lives. With this project we have been able to use this platform to challenge ourselves to look beyond the literal and the perfect and instead to place ourselves as close to the spirit of the river as possible and capture what we encounter with the imperfections of documentation. But then what of the spaces we can no longer capture? As artists are we only framing the realities we exist in?

The team: Lapdiang A. Syiem, Juban Lamar, Abigail Nongsiej, Apkyrmenskhem Tangsong, Esther Syiem, Baston Singh Lyngdoh and a community of people who have shared with us their connection to the Umkhrah and its tributaries.

© Urvi Vora Many posters from the post-colonial period show an image of a muscular Indian man with a thick, black moustache that curls up on both ends, and can be twisted on demand. He is shown speaking about the ‘Five Year Plan’ for India’s development next to a relatively lanky British soldier. There is this old saying Moochh nahi, toh kuchh nahi which directly translates to If you don’t have a moustache, you don't have anything. But in the border regions of Punjab, it is understood differently: If you don't have a moustache, you don't have a penis.

This is how you move them is a performative essay looking at the role of moustaches and penises at the Wagah Border Ceremony and the role of ideology in a democracy.

Visual and Sound Design by Sijya Gupta | Website Design by Hiren Kangad & Shaunaq Madan | Performed by Ankit Pandey and Lauren Robinson | Filmed by Annette Jacob | Mixed and Mastered by Jay Panelia | Written and Directed by Urvi Vora

© Last Seen Abhi.Neta, Aayenge is based on Ionesco’s play The Leader - written in 1953, it is an absurdist look at the role played by the media and hype in the creation of political propaganda. In this transmedia adaptation, the performance is not only located in the bodies of the actors, but also in the performance of technology itself: social media and news websites and other platforms “perform” in response to both algorithmic diktats as well as to user interaction. Digital communication tools show how these technologies are constantly leveraged to design different and competing versions of the truth, and the role that we as ​actors ​play through our own performances on these platforms. The performance is devised with an acute awareness of how the digital is already a hyper performative space, where identities and behaviours are enactments that are modulated by technology.

Abhi.Neta, Aayenge inverts the practices of storytelling: instead of hiding the structures of fiction-making, through its exploration of the themes of misinformation, the attention economy and fake news, it mimics the very real phenomenon that we currently see in the making of news - a nexus of social media hashtags generated by both fake and genuine sources that creates news in and of itself - a simulacrum of the actual news event, which no longer enters the news cycle without being mediated by the filters of social media outrage.
 
With: Paulanthony George, Varun Kurtkoti, Satchit Puranik and Padmini Ray Murray.