Independent art curator Ayan Mukherjee is currently experimenting with various mediums, and curating projects using narratives and experiences based on life. After a successful stint at New Delhi early this year, his latest work, Kuch Toh Log Kahenge: The Violence of Words, has opened its second episode on April 29 at Bourbonne Les Bains, France. Ayan shares insights on his project and collaborations. Excerpts:
What is the collaboration like this time?
This time, I’m collaborating with six immensely intense contemporary art practitioners across disciplines, from France, Switzerland, and Haiti after months of investigative, panoramic dialogue and exchange of perspectives, notions, experiences, and such. These projects are a way to reach out to a wider audience with our perspectives and experiences through visual arts, narratives, poems, and music.
What’s Kuch Toh Log Kahenge all about?
Kuch Toh Log Kahenge talks about the present time which is materialistic, incredibly swirling, and compromising. And in this situation, hurling words at each other is the biggest culprit I feel. Words used as weapons of violence have long been legitimate in various spheres of our society, be it political, social, or personal. And we are basically questioning that. It’s high time that we practise weighing the words that we are throwing or pointing at others.
I wrote about this almost 2-3 years back, and have plans to turn it into an episodic format. The more I am exchanging ideas, the more the topic is getting enriched. I am not just curating it, I have used my poems, narratives, videos and visual arts in this too. The music that we have created seems like noise, with many people chattering, but you won’t be able to decipher what exactly they are saying. I plan to have more discussions on this, and probably have 5-6 episodes more, with different sets of people. For muuch later, I have thought of writing a book on this, which will be like a collective inference of all these episodes.