November 17, New Delhi: In light of the evolving landscape of audience engagement, Serendipity Arts Foundation is pleased to launch a new digital experience called SA Virtual. Starting from the 4th December 2020, SA Virtual will be spread across two weeks and the programming will be hosted and linked from a specially designed website,serendipityartsvirtual.com which will give everyone free access by simply registering. To access exclusive art programs, art shows, virtual gallery, digital art. Online arts, computer arts, using inter for the arts, arts on the internet, Australia Vs India, Biggboss or bigboss, Diwali videos, Christmas time. Arts, Family, Work from home, creative usage of the internet, Arts for the festive season, Greetings.
SA Virtual is an extension of the Foundation’s focus on expanding its digital offerings in the year 2020. The approach also comes from recognizing the Internet as a common ground for daily interactions, in a rapidly changing world. So far the Foundation has launched a number of successful digital initiatives, such as SAF x You, the How to…Series, and the Memory Capsule Project. Given stringent advisories on travel and public gatherings by governments across the world, from the early quarter of 2020, the physical edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival stands postponed. However, continuing with the series of digital offerings from Serendipity Arts Foundation, SA Virtual will respond to the internet and its big role in connecting people from across the world and consolidating its offerings, that binds us together. The SA Virtual will turn to the internet as a site in order to forge meaningful artistic collaborations that are hinged on innovative integration of the arts and the digital space, aiming to foster an increasingly open and accessible arts community.
Taking place on your personal digital devices from the 4th December – 21st of December, the virtual programme seeks to conceptualize and adapt artistic visions and projects for spaces that can be created and accessed digitally; not merely using the internet as an alternative medium, but as a dimension with its own unique properties that can encourage new thinking and create new possibilities for how art is created and how it is experienced, for years to come.
SA Virtual will feature curated projects, performances, workshops, talks, engagement-based initiatives and discourse around the arts. Some of the curators whose projects will feature as part of SA Virtual are Amitesh Grover, Anmol Vellani, AnujaGhosalkar & Kai Tuchmann, Kristine Michael & Chandrika Grover Ralleigh, Lina Vincent& artistic collaborator Akshay Mahajan, MandeepRaikhy, Veeranganakumari Solanki, Siddhant Shah and more. All of the featured curators have approached the mandate of curating for an internet-based audience by transcending the traditional silos between artistic disciplines. Additionally, the programme features Vertigo Dance Company’s performance One, One & One, choreographed by Noa Wertheim and a dance workshop, supported by the Embassy of Israel in India. A performance of Introducing… Antigone, Interrupted by Scottish Dance Theatre will be presented during the virtual programme, with support from British Council India.
The emphasis is on collaboration and on increasing creative inclusivity by thinking beyond the conventional definitions of who is an artist.
Explaining the idea behind SA Virtual, Mr. Sunil Kant Munjal, Founder Patron Serendipity Arts Foundation, said, “Historically, the arts have survived perilous times and emerged stronger because of an innate ability to adapt, acclimatize and evolve. Over the last few months, the internet surge has catalyzed this evolution. Through SA Virtual, we have tried to draw attention to the limitless possibilities that arts as a practice and the internet as a medium can offer each other”.
Speaking about the project, Ms. Smriti Rajgarhia, Director Serendipity Arts Foundation, said, “As a Foundation, we believe in the power of innovation and creativity. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to find new avenues and formats for the arts, and an effective way to create greater impact through the power of the internet, reaching out to new audiences while expanding conversations about and around the arts. We have attempted to use the internet as our ‘site’ for artistic journeys, taking it beyond its everyday use.”
Speaking about the initiative, Ms Shefali Munjal, Patron, Serendipity Arts Foundation, explained that, “This year we reimagined our initiatives, to explore arts outreach options that could go beyond the physical formats. The pandemic has caused major shifts in our outlook of life and its engagement with the arts. SA Virtual acts as the perfect platform in keeping our conversations intact and continuing our support to the arts, through the digital space and offer programming that responds to the internet as a site.”
One of the highlights of the performances will be My story | Your story | Our story, curated by Anmol Vellani. This project will have two performances—in live and recorded medium respectively, and an unfinished story. Another, The Last Poet, is being curated by Amitesh Grover, asa multilayered art form with theatre, film, sound art, creative coding, digital scenography, and live performance—to be navigated by visitors as rooms and doors leading to experiences. Meanwhile, MandeepRaikhy’s The Body-in-Movement is imagined as an interconnected web of thinking, seeing, making and writing. This curatorial proposition is conceived of as a laboratory that enables a group of artists from across disciplines to think through what it means to move/create/perform in these times, what the digital space has to offer to the emergent discourse of the body, and the ways in which presence/ absence of the body is constructed and experienced within the digital web.
SA Virtual will also proactively engage with people from a range of demographics guided by a strong policy of diversity and inclusion and offering a selection free workshops and conversations. Highlights include craft artisan workshops including Phad, Madhubani and Gond paintings, guided drawings, inclusive art workshops for children, DIY sensory engagement activities, Kite making, Scroll painting, Sanjhi paper cutting, recipes from Goan restaurants and much more. Viewers will also get to attend Zoom talks and active engagements around the commissioned SA Virtual project. These talks or engagements will be with the artists and curators who are working on the project. Conversations also include roundtables on the iconic yesteryears arts and literary journal, The Modern Review, that shaped India’s political and cultural discourse as part of an upcoming research project called Text /Matters, and exploring the print publics of the past and present.
The official hashtag of the SA Virtual will be #PressEnterClick, and the new webpage will carry the essential details about the daily offering.
For additional information and news updates please visit www.seredipityart.org, or follow Instagram @serendipityartsfestival| Twitter @SerendipityArtsFest|Facebook @serendipityartsfestival
Notes to Editor
About Serendipity Arts Foundation
Serendipity Arts Foundation, a Munjal initiative for creativity, is a not-for-profit arts and cultural development Foundation that fosters cultural development and supports emerging artists across South Asia. The Foundation aims to promote new creative strategies, artistic interventions, and cultural partnerships which are responsive, addressing the social, cultural and environmental milieu of South Asia. The Foundation’s programmes are designed and initiated through innovative collaborations with partners across a multitude of fields, impacting education, promoting social growth via community development programmes, and exploring interdisciplinarity across the arts.
About Serendipity Arts Festival
The Foundation’s primary initiative and largest project, Serendipity Arts Festival is a multi-disciplinary arts event held annually every December in Goa. Curated by a panel of eminent artists and institutional figures, the Festival is a long-term cultural project that hopes to instigate positive change across the arts in India on a large scale. Spanning the visual, performing and culinary arts, the Festival’s programming includes music, dance, visual arts, craft, photography, film and theatre. The Festival addresses pressing social issues such as arts education and pedagogy, cultural patronage, interdisciplinary discourse, and accessibility to the arts. Serendipity Arts Festival’s intensive programme of exhibitions and performances is energized by spaces for social and educational engagement.
**Universally, this pandemic has taught us to come together and rally around the greatest strength we possess – the human spirit. Through all this, we at SAF are re- emphasizing what is most important – our audience, our team members and our beloved community.
As we sit at home, checking the news countless times to see how the vaccine for COVID-19 is progressing, our perception of time changes. Distances have changed, the value of a hug has altered, the importance of friends, family, and community is stronger than before. The things we took for granted have been made abundantly clear. Everything we knew “before Covid” will be redefined by philosophers and poets, historians, environmentalists, and economists in years to come. Our team has been working tirelessly and thinking about the ways in which we could both, engage and support the human spirit. Our team has been putting together newsletters which include recommendations on Film, Music, books, online courses etc. https://saf-newsletter.squarespace.com/
We are, however, particularly fortunate to be at a point in time where technology allows us to explore and experience the arts like never before. From the comfort of your home, you can virtually travel to see / hear /experience / participate in a range of exhibitions, concerts, performances and workshops, all just the click of a link away! At Serendipity Arts Foundation, we have been inspired by the resilience and strength of the arts community, in offering kindness, hope and a dash of the arts to the wider public even as we collectively experience these strenuous times. We would like to thank the arts community for their efforts in keeping the arts alive and roaring! In this vein, we had initiated the SAF 2020 x You. Every day from April 25-30th, as a digital experience, of a multi-disciplinary cross section of the arts, both regional and international, in an online festival of sorts. The is has been followed up by the How To… Series spanning more than four weeks in May – June which responded to queries arising out of practices in Visual Arts, Photography, Theatre, Dance, Craft, Music, Culinary Arts and more, that everyone can enjoy form the comfort of their homes.
#StaySafe #StayHome
