For a more interactive Kochi-Muziris Biennale

KOCHI: As an effort to make the fourth edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale more interactive, the platform will have popular sessions called ‘pop up' for visitors to express their creativity. The Biennale Pavilion will be open for everyone to present their work in poetry, lecture, discussion, presentation of a paper or any form of performance.

The Pavilion, intends to explore the various 'possibilities for a non-alienated life' according to the conceptual note. “I realised the exhibition model was not sufficient to address the self-determination of an audience or public that something else was required,” says Anita Dube, curator, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018. “A non-institutional public space for conversations — not only for programmed talks and lectures — where there would be no hierarchies of who could speak and what could be said and in which language,” she adds. 

In the last week of January, for instance, a team of Kochiites specialising in street dances performed and jammed with fellow visitors at the Pavilion at Cabral Yard. In a short notice, space was abuzz with hip-hoppers and Bboys from different areas walking in and starting jamming rising the spirit of the ongoing edition of the Biennale.

That’s how the Southside Bboys (SSB) showcased a dash of hip-hop culture at the Pavilion which is among things central to the country’s biggest contemporary art event. Totalling close to a dozen artists, the city-based group enriched yet another evening at the leafy venue of Fort Kochi. 

On January 15, student groups from Baroda’s Maharaja Sayajirao University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago came together at the Pavilion for informal discussions with the Biennale’s curator Anita Dube and some members from the Kochi Biennale Foundation. Dube explains, “The idea of opening up the pavilion was to have as many interactive conversations with creative minds and provide a platform for idea exchange.”

Ten days before that, LGBTQ rights activist Alok Vaid-Menon, an American performance artist-poet, suddenly made use of the Pavilion to showcase his talent: reciting poems. “It was one of the most spontaneous performances we had so far and I was amazed by the visitor’s response,” states Dube. Alok was visiting the Biennale when the team approached him and requested for a performance. He immediately accepted and the Biennale team sent a shout-out about the performance in their social media pages.

Art mediator Marina Thayil did a talk titled ‘The Half-naked Fakir’ and discussed the revolutionary in a loincloth and examined the reasons for Gandhi’s personal choice of attire and his search for integrity in identity and appearance. The talk also addressed the decline of the Indian textile trade and the reason for Gandhi’s use of the spinning wheel in the struggle for India’s independence.

There was also a musical performance by members of the coast guard, a documentary film by Antony Zimayon called ‘Pazhaya Paalam’ — a short documentary on the Harbour Bridge at Kochi and a talk on heritage and social entrepreneurship by Subhi Gupta of the Mussoorie Heritage Center amongst others.
Thus, the Pavilion will be 'a discursive, performative, architectural space' where 'everyone potentially can be a curator,' points out Dube.