The Serendipity Arts Foundation, that hosts the Serendipity Arts Festival every year, is going digital this year in light of the pandemic, with a new experience SA Virtual. The Foundation has also launched a number of digital initiatives, such as SAF x You, the How to…Series, and the Memory Capsule Project earlier.
SA Virtual will feature curated projects, performances, workshops, talks, engagement-based initiatives and discourse around the arts. Some of the curators whose projects will feature as part of SA Virtual are Amitesh Grover, Anmol Vellani, Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann, Kristine Michael and Chandrika Grover Ralleigh, Lina Vincent and artistic collaborator Akshay Mahajan, Mandeep Raikhy, Veeranganakumari Solanki, Siddhant Shah and more. All of the featured curators have approached the mandate of curating for an internet-based audience by transcending the traditional silos between artistic disciplines. The emphasis is on collaboration and on increasing creative inclusivity by thinking beyond the conventional definitions of who is an artist.
Starting from December 4 to 21, 2020, SA Virtual will be spread across two weeks and the programming will be hosted and linked from a specially designed website (serendipityartsvirtual.com) which will give everyone free access by simply registering.SA Virtual is an extension of the Foundation's focus on expanding its digital offerings in the year 2020. The approach also comes from recognizing the Internet as a common ground for daily interactions in a rapidly changing world.The SA Virtual will turn to the internet as a site in order to forge artistic collaborations that are hinged on innovative integration of the arts and the digital space, aiming to foster an increasingly open and accessible arts community.
Sunil Kant Munjal, Founder Patron, Serendipity Arts Foundation, said, "Historically, the arts have survived perilous times and emerged stronger because of an innate ability to adapt, acclimatize and evolve. Over the last few months, the internet surge has catalyzed this evolution. Through SA Virtual, we have tried to draw attention to the limitless possibilities that arts as a practice and the internet as a medium can offer each other."Speaking about the project, Ms. Smriti Rajgarhia, Director Serendipity Arts Foundation, said, “As a Foundation, we believe in the power of innovation and creativity. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to find new avenues and formats for the arts, and an effective way to create greater impact through the power of the internet, reaching out to new audiences while expanding conversations about and around the arts. We have attempted to use the internet as our ‘site’ for artistic journeys, taking it beyond its everyday use."
One of the highlights of the performances will be 'My story | Your story | Our story', curated by Anmol Vellani. This project will have two performances in live and recorded medium respectively, and an unfinished story. Another is, 'The Last Poet', curated by Amitesh Grover, as a multi-layered art form with theatre, film, sound art, creative coding, digital scenography, and live performance to be navigated by visitors as rooms and doors leading to experiences.Mandeep Raikhy's 'The Body-in-Movement' has been imagined as an interconnected web of thinking, seeing, making and writing. This curatorial proposition is conceived of as a laboratory that enables a group of artists from across disciplines to think through what it means to move/create/perform in these times, what the digital space has to offer to the emergent discourse of the body, and the ways in which presence/ absence of the body is constructed and experienced within the digital web.The programme also features Vertigo Dance Company's performance 'One, One & One', choreographed by Noa Wertheim and a dance workshop, supported by the Embassy of Israel in India besides several workshops.
Details: serendipityartsvirtual.com