The focus of the installation was to raise awareness of the citizens of Kolkata through an immersive experience of the importance of the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW). This experience used the history and the unique features of the EKW to foreground the co-dependence of the EKW to the City of Kolkata. The setup was done at the ground of the Kheyada High School, which is an important social and institutional landmark of the surrounding context.
The installation had informative visual material, engagement kits and various activities designed for the visitors to impart a holistic understanding on the manifold roles that the EKW plays in sustainability and propagation of everyday life. The Wetland Trails (co-guided by community children) was a major highlight which heightened this immersive experience to further a grounded understanding.
ABOUT THE PARTNER: Disappearing Dialogues Collective
The Disappearing Dialogues Collective (DD) is a dynamic platform for creative engagement and cultural expression that aims to foreground everyday practices and environmental awareness of a particular socio-spatial reality through collaborative, co- produced arts practices. In working closely with children and pedagogical processes, DD looks at art as a situated, embedded practice that enables an alternative mode of learning about individual and collective socio-cultural identities. It also makes possible trajectories of socio-spatial activism and transformation from a deeply rooted standing.
Nibona Gupta - Founder-Director, Disappearing Dialogues
A staunch believer in socially engaged art practice, Nobina Gupta conceived the Disappearing Dialogues collective, which aims to initiate interdisciplinary interactions. In
the past few years she has been curating Disappearing Dialogues as the Founder Director, which has developed into a dynamic platform engaging different communities,
institutions, social groups and generations through interactive artworks, research, documentation, community collective activities reflecting on historical, cultural, social and environmental losses, sediments and memories intrinsic to a city or a region. An alumnus of Kala Bhavan, her work has been showcased widely both in India and elsewhere. The need to collaboratively work within socio-spatial realities with the community came to her while researching for the initial ‘Disappearing Dialogues’ project, which was a part of the Earth Art Project, co-sponsored by the Japan Foundation, in the Changthang valley in Ladakh. Her desire is to break norms and boundaries to explore and disseminate research and community based learnings, focusing on process, practice and everyday life.
