A 12th century Vachana performance, food walks, story-collecting and storytelling booths, large public murals, shadow puppetry, comics and zines, film screenings, storytelling sessions, virtual reality experiences. These are some of the delightful art work that will be presented as part of Festival of Stories, by Art in Transit. The project has been created by Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in association with BMRCL over the last two years. Following an artistic intervention at Peenya Metro Station, Art in Transit moves to the underground Cubbon Park Metro Station. The first festival of this series will take place on October 22 and 23, at Cubbon Park Metro Station, Cubbon Park, Bal Bhavan Society, Venkatappa Art Gallery and Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum.
Students of Srishti and both emerging and well-known artists are seen busy working on life-size murals and installations at the Metro Station. The station looks transformed into an art world, breathing life into a city that is undergoing maddening development. "Art is important. Especially when the city, in its rage of development, has lost its humaneness,” says Arzu Mistry, faculty at Srishti, and project lead.
She adds: "The Art in Transit Project at the Metro Station gives students the amazing opportunity to work in a live contexts and learn from the metro’s civil, electrical and structural engineers. We have students from so many departments from contemporary art practice to public space design that have taken up this project. They get the rare opportunity to realize their conceptual design with experts from the field.”
Srishti’s engagement with BMRCL at Cubbon Park Metro seeks to open up this new public space of the metro and to the city's community of artists. The other partners include institutions such as Herman Miller, US Consulate, Chennai, 3M India, HiGrid Imaging Soultion Pvt Ltd and Art partners are Bangalore Storytelling Society, CEMA, Centre for Public History, Design Earth, FlippAR, Native Place, Science Gallery, St+Art India Foundation, VR Collective, 1 Shanthi Road, Shadow Liberation, individual artists and artists collectives of Bengaluru.
“It has been fantastic to bring so many city art partners into this project. For the Festival of Stories, we have collaborated with all the surrounding government partners including the Horticultural Department, Venkatappa Art Gallery, Vishveshvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, and Bal Bhavan. A new furniture venture in the city, called Metaphor, has generously opened up their factory to our students and FlippAR a new tech company is working with us on augmented reality. People are coming forth to collaborate and that brings great energy to these public spaces.”
Taarini Jouhari who was supported in her project by Metaphor: "I am creating a twisted metal structure within it is woven film. There are also going to be lights around. It will be shaped like a walk-through canopy. The inspiration came from when I looked at the Bangalore sky. I wanted to bring it to the Cubbon Park underground."
"There is an installation of light boxes, made of acrylic and LED lights, which will create patterns on the wall. This is a creation by Urvika Chhabra,” adds Arzu, adding: "At one end is an installation of slices of Narayan Pillai Street. It's almost like an archaeological dig. As the city has develops, what lies hidden?"
For details visit: www.artintransitbangalore.com.
