Making seminars seamless

Kaiwan Mehta and TARQ have joined forces to present a series of seminars on a set of subjects, each one fattened by a diversity of interdisciplinary approaches

Here’s a brilliant brain sharpener, if ever there was one.

Architect, lecturer, theorist and researcher Kaiwan Mehta, together with TARQ, has curated a series of seminars that map six sets of subjects. Each of them consists of six readings that look to investigate and illuminate a significant concept: Time, Archive, Space, Beauty, Museum and Memory.

The initiative represents a shift from the conventional academic seminar with its tidy, streamlined disciplinary approach. Mehta has chosen to thread together discursive approaches to each subject. He says, “We will be dealing with concepts that emerge from the wider fields and disciplines of philosophy, cultural studies, and literary studies, and closely related to practices of artistic production, film making, writing, and other such practices.”

Mehta’s experience in organising education programmes, and discursive seminars in university structures as well as para-academic spaces, was a significant catalyst in putting together these readings. He says, “As one is constantly involved in writing on current artistic practices, teaching about them, developing programmes for critical studies: one is aware of important concepts, the questions they pose, and the methodologies of study one should route. This combined with the planning of art exhibitions at TARQ and the issues they wish to address helped us produce this shortlist.”

The first set of readings started in August and unlocked ways of looking at the concept of Time by plundering a multiplicity of text: everyone from Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georg Simmel to T.S Eliot, Milan Kundera, Immanuel Kant and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. They were conducted by Mehta, Asha Achuthan, Imran Ali Khan, Biraj Mehta, Mitra Mukherjee-Parikh and Anita Vaccharajani. The seminar on Archive was held in September and the rest have been slotted into a rough schedule that flows into June 2017. He says, “As for the seminar on Archive: the key take-off point [has been] some of the earliest cultural thinkers such as Walter Benjamin.”

Structures of ‘archiving’

The curator then brought the question to the many artistic and curatorial practices that have tried to engage with the condition of the late 20th century through the processes and structures of ‘archiving. “So certain historical locations [were] visited through the lens of critical theories,” says Mehta, who led a review of more recent practices and ideas to understand the shape of the idea in contemporary understanding or culture as well as critical practices.

TARQ has proved to be the perfect partner for this venture, with its interest in a culture of learning within and alongside its art programmes. This has helped dissolve the hierarchy between the fusty halls of academia and the spotless gallery space, by enfolding the art gallery into a sort of lecture hall. He says, “TARQ is the place where we — Ranjit Hoskote and myself, as co-curators of the literature section of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival — organised the TARQ Salons, a series of focussed panel discussions on a variety of important and sensitive aspects and issues vis-a-vis arts, culture, and politics.”

Pushing boundaries

Mehta says the TARQ series is not only a very closely and carefully curated series but is also constantly experimenting with the idea of art and pushing the boundaries of definitions of art, photography, sculpture, new media, books and text.

It is also, with every show, developing newer methodologies of approaching the idea of ‘exhibition’. “In this way, TARQ is ideal for developing a discursive seminar.”

Source | http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/making-seminars-seamless/article9313912.ece

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Manager @ Library

Khaitan & Co

Blog | http://pralhad-fyilibrarian.blogspot.in/