Author, historian, musician and the man behind the Bangalore Lit Fest, Vikram Sampath, recently took up an assignment close to his heart. In February, the Bangalore-based fine-arts enthusiast took over as Executive Director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), Southern Regional Centre. Vikram spoke to MetroPlus about IGNCA and the upcoming exhibition. Excerpts.
Can you tell us of IGNCA’s Brihadiswara temple exhibition?
The exhibition is an outcome of IGNCA’s 20-year study and recreates the temple through photographs and documentation. Rajaraja Chola built the Brihadiswara temple in 1010 and it is acclaimed as the finest achievement of Chola architecture. The inscriptions on the walls of the temple provide a vast corpus of information at the level of economic, social, cultural patterns and structures. The temple has attracted the attention of archaeologists, epigraphists, literary critics, musicians, dancers, craft specialists, sociologists and anthropologists. The exhibition tries to recreate the splendour of the temple with the mural paintings on the inner walls, inscriptions, architectural plans, and paintings of various dynasties. Nearly 200 exhibits would be on display.
To be at the helm of IGNCA must have been a dream come true for you?
Yes indeed! I had always dreamt of this role, given my passion for arts, there could be no better opportunity than this. Coming from a corporate background, it has been a completely different shift to be part of a Central Government institute’s world of arts administration. My role now is to steer the IGNCA’s activities with collaborations and partnerships with arts bodies, scholars and artists and universities and academic institutions, both in India and abroad.
What is the way forward?
The IGNCA was established in 1987 as an autonomous Trust under the Government of India’s Ministry of Culture. It is a nodal agency that focuses on research, documentation, archiving and dissemination in the largest spectrum of the arts. The underlying philosophy is to examine the complementary and integrative features of all art forms. Through exhibitions, workshops, seminars and conferences, concerts and performances, these cultural artefacts are disseminated. I think this incubatory space and an introspective look at the arts, which tend to become externalized, especially in a performance paradigm.
The six main functional units of IGNCA are Kalanidhi (rare books, microfilms and visual library); Kalakosha (publication of texts on aspects of Indian art); Janapada Sampada (folk lifestyle studies); Kaladarshana (Cultural Informatics Lab where modern technology is applied for cultural preservation and production of interactive multimedia projects); and Sutradhara (the administrative section). The Library is stocked with nearly 11,500 books on art and culture. We also have a Reprography Unit with 13,500 microfilms of rare manuscripts from across India.
What are the challenges at this point?
Though the Centre has been in existence for almost 12 to 13 years now, awareness has been low. Scholars and enthusiasts could dip into the cultural archives, the library and microfilms as they are easily accessible. Bangalore has a dearth of quality library spaces while here we have so many books and resources, it is unfortunate that they remain unused. Distance might have been a problem earlier. Now I think we will be able to overcome that at the Southern Regional Centre.
As part of our dissemination theme, South India Heritage Lecture series, concerts, workshops, academic conferences, film screenings etc. are being planned. Research and documentation across South India will be undertaken as that is the principal focus of the IGNCA. A cultural archive for music, dance, ethnography is being planned at the Centre.
The focus is not just Bangalore or the Southern metros of Chennai, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram, but also towns such as Mysore, Hubli-Dharwad, Thrissur, Kochi, Vizag, Thanjavur, Madurai, Pondicherry, Kanchipuram. Building partnerships with local arts and culture bodies and universities is of prime importance.
