The eight-day-long Serendipity Arts Festival, a platform to showcase performing, visual and culinary arts, will commence on December 16 in Goa. The panel of 14 curators in the performing arts field includes Anuradha Kapur, Lillete Dubey, Ranjit Barot, Sanjeev Bhargava, Shubha Mudgal and Tanusree Shankar.
From the culinary arts world, the curators are Manu Chandra and Odette Mascarenhas, while from the visual arts discipline there is Jyotindra Jain, Riyas Komu, Dinesh Khanna, Manjari Narula, Ranjit Hoskote and Prashant Panjiar.
“The idea was to question spaces. Why should visual arts only be clubbed with music? Why can’t it be experienced differently? We have tried to do this in the Festival,” says Preeta Singh, Festival Director. She feels it is unfair to use the term ‘arts festival’ with regard to Serendipity, as it is an experiment, which will grow and evolve.
A host of exhibitions, workshops and interactions are scheduled with some interesting collaborations such as ‘Living Traditions,’ an experience where vocalist Shubha Mudgal and designer Rohit Bal will celebrate the music and fashion of the early 1900s. Theatre actor and director Lillete Dubey, along with playwright Mahesh Dattani, will conduct a four-day residential writing programme titled ‘The Script Lab’ for aspiring writers.
The festival will also look at showcasing the cultural heritage of Goa through photography and culinary events. With collaborations from artistes from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives and India, Serendipity will be hosting events that focus on interdisciplinary projects.
The festival will take place in Panaji across seven venues. Hoping to create a platform for experts and aspirants to have meaningful discussion about the arts, the festival looks to serve as an agent of change in the arts landscape in the subcontinent.
The writer is an intern with The Hindu
Registrations are free. For details, visit seredipityarts festival.com
