December 15 to 19, 2012 | 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
Studio X, Kitab Mahal, Fort, Mumbai

The Value of Culture course, developed and implemented by the Centre for Research in Arts and Economics (CREARE), Netherlands, will be offered in Mumbai (India) in collaboration with the Mohile Parikh Center (MPC), Mumbai.

The arts play an increasingly important role in modern society while creativity is becoming a driving force. Organizations want to be creative, professionals seek creative work and the economy of the future has to be a creative economy. A new world asks for a new perspective, and to understand the role of the arts, implies an awareness of the value that creative industries play in our contemporary times.

In the context of developing countries, there is a lack of basic infrastructure and financial support, with culture being relegated to a subsidiary issue in economic policies. Strategies and programmes take a rather static approach while budget allocations for culture are a fraction of national budgets and often ineffectively utilized or underutilized. At the same time, support from the private sector to culture is time limited and necessarily selective. Also, there is a limited exchange between cultural actors and stakeholders and most function out of isolated positions rather than as networked systems.

Even in developed nations, the funding models and support to arts and culture have undergone radical cuts given the global economic crisis. For arts and cultural organizations to sustain themselves and continue to offer creative programs, they are forced to think differently and act otherwise. A dynamic relationship between cultural entrepreneurship and sustainability, the role of new technologies, creating innovative and socially relevant products, services and working processes seems to be the way forward to manage this crisis. To do so, art and cultural practitioners and managers need to grasp a better understanding of the manner in which the cultural sector operates, especially how it relates to the society and economy.

This short, five days intensive course offers the cultural economic perspective. It introduces new concepts, other ways of thinking that students in a variety of disciplines can apply in their study and from which practitioners in the cultural sector can benefit. It will explore the characteristics of cultural industries and environments that foster creativity in economy and society as a whole. One of the questions addressed is how all these aspects of creativity can contribute to better government policies and better leadership in professional organizations. The course, for 15 selected participants, will provide both theoretical and practical knowledge. As part of the process participants will learn by interacting with texts, teachers, and with each other.

Arjo Klamer is professor of Cultural Economics at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Before that he taught at various universities in the US. He is often invited as a guest lecturer at universities in the Netherlands and abroad, as well as for talks for business groups, government organizations and the general public. His research focuses on the relationship between culture and the economy. One of his major research topics is the value of culture. He conducted a research project on behalf of the European Parliament on ‘The financing of art and culture in Europe”.

Lyudmila Petrova graduated in MA in Cultural Economics and Cultural Entrepreneurship at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Rotterdam. She is in the last year of her PhD research at the same department. She is teaching on ‘Creativity and economy’ at various international programs. She worked on international researches, among the others a research project commissioned by the European Parliament on “The financing for the arts and culture within the EU”. Her research interests include the economics of arts and culture, international perspectives of cultural policies, financing the arts and interdisciplinary aspects of creativity.

Anna Mignosa studied Economics at the University of Catania. She took her PhD at the Faculty of History and Arts Erasmus University, Rotterdam. She teaches and conducts research on cultural policies, economics of cultural heritage, and economics of the art markets. Since 2010 she is a member of the board of the Association of Cultural Economics International (ACEI) and she is a Canon Foundation Fellow for the year 2007. She conducted a research project on behalf of the European Parliament on “The financing of art and culture in Europe”.

Priyateja Kotipalli hails form Mumbai, India. His work focuses on formulation of policy and the role culture and heritage have for economic development. Before becoming a PhD candidate at Erasmus University he was working as Sr. Lecturer in the area of Strategic Management and Research Methods at ITM Group of Institutions. He holds a Masters in Business Administration from the National Institute of Tourism and Hospitality and a bachelors degree in Heritage Management from K.C College, University of Mumbai.

October 14 to 16, 2011 | 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
YMCA Seminar Room, Mumbai

Why a course on thinking? After all, if there is anything that we think we do all the time, it is thinking. But then here is the sad truth: thinking is a skill, is a method, and has to be taught.

What does it mean to teach thinking? It is to recognize what thinking is, what happens to us when we think, how we actually think, the different ways by which we think. It is to understand what is meant by critical thinking and creative thinking, to reflect on the different types of thinking and imagining that characterizes art, science and philosophy. It is also to recognize why philosophy is fundamentally about understanding the nature of thinking.

What might one learn from this reflection on thinking? Here is a wish-list:
• learning to be aware of what we do when we think
• understanding the relation between thinking and language
• an introduction to the philosophy of mind
• nature of logical thinking and creative thinking (not that they are opposites of each other!)
• theories of imagination
• learning to read and write (no, this is not an adult literacy class but reading and writing are fundamentally related to the skills of thinking)

Warning: This course will be injurious to your health – it is not a management course but one that draws primarily on philosophy.

Day 1: On Thinking about Thinking
We will begin with exploring the experience of thinking. What happens to us when we think? How do we recognize the elements of this experience? What does an awareness of this experience teach us about the nature of thinking? Does thinking involve the body or only the mind? How is it that many of us think alike if thinking is such a private activity? What is the special relationship between the mind and the act of thinking? And yes, by the way, what exactly is this thing called the mind?

We will also begin the exploration of the relation between thinking and language. Is all thinking in language? Can we think without any ‘language’? Do we think better in any specific language? Do we think in pictures? Is that also like thinking in language? If we think in a language does it mean that my thinking is constrained by that language? What exactly do we think about? Ideas? Concepts?…

Day 2: Critical and Creative Thinking
We will try and understand the nature of logic and its relationship with thinking. Why has logic often been referred to as the ‘laws of thought’? Does logic force us to think in the same manner? We will look at different types of logic, including Indian logic, to understand some basic truths about thinking. Is thinking a particular form of reasoning? Is scientific thinking a form of critical thinking?

The second session will be on creative thinking. Is creative thinking a skill? Can it be taught? Is it a method? What does it mean to be a creative thinker? How does creativity arise? Is all of artistic thinking creative thinking? Is there a relation between artistic thinking and logical thinking? Is creativity in science different from creativity in art?

Day 3: From Imagination to Reading/Writing
Is imagination a form of thinking? But what is so special to imagination? How have various thinkers understood the nature of imagination? We will look at various theories of imagination to get a grasp of this elusive concept.

Thinking and imagination have an essential relationship with the acts of reading and writing. What is so special to reading and writing? After all, these are skills we learn in primary school. Hmm. Think again. And again. We actually do not know how to read. And do not know what we are doing when we are writing. So we will think about how thinking is related to the acts of reading and writing.

Welcome to the land of philosophy where nothing is what it seems.

Sundar Sarukkai is Professor and Director, Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University, where an innovative MA program in interdisciplinary humanities has been started. He is trained in physics and philosophy, and has a PhD from Purdue University. His research interests include Philosophy of Science and Mathematics, Philosophy of Language and Philosophy of Art. Sarukkai has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, Fellow of the Shimla Institute of Advanced Studies and PHISPC Associate Fellow. He is the author of the following books: Translating the world: Science and Language, Philosophy of Symmetry, and Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. His forthcoming books include What is Science? and The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory (co-authored with Gopal Guru).

August 26 to 28, 2011 | 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
YMCA Seminar Room, Mumbai

The 2010 course for Art History intends to take off from where the 2009 course concluded, tracing the idea of the ‘modern’ (itself an infinitely vexed and much contested category) as it manifests through linguistic, thematic, conceptual as well as stylistic shifts from the terminal stages of the courtly traditions to the advent of new practices around the nineteen forties. The course does not intend to be overtly theoretical, save where such deductions evolve from the material of our concern, the visual images themselves; it would rather be an exercise in ‘looking’ at art and attempting to ‘read’ them contextually. The decades following the nineteen forties have been intentionally compressed into the second half of the final day, with the hope that this post-script will once again become an introductory lead to a more detailed and specialized presentation in a future course.

Lectures:
Day I:

1. A short introduction with two coordinates: (a) locating ‘modern’ in a context called India, & (b) tracing the shifts via art as pictorial language – ‘reading’ visual images
2. Early encounters: (i) from the courtly traditions to the phenomenon of the “Company school”; (ii) the urban transformation of the folk, as in Kalighat “pata” paintings; (iii) the “Bat-tala” prints of Kolkata
3. “Ravana fighting Jatayu” by Raja Ravi Varma: pictorial realism and recreation of a mythic past
4. “The hunchback of the fish bone” and “Sindbad the sailor” from the ‘Arabian Nights’ series by
Abanindranath Tagore: stepping beyond the nationalist prerogatives of a ‘new’ Indian pictorial style
5. Gaganendranath Tagore’s “The coming of the princess” & Rabindranath Tagore’s portraits – claims to a tradition infinitely larger than the indigenous

Day II:

6. The “Halakarshana mural” at Sriniketan by Nandalal Bose – re-invocation of the mural tradition at Santiniketan and the contextuality of theme and language
7. Benodebehari Mukherjee’s tile mural in Kala Bhavana – a visual statement about tactile space: a proposition for the aural
8. The “Thresher” by Ramkinkar Baij as a distinctive sculptural statement of the ‘Famine’ of 1943- 44
9. A proposition for shifting our attention from the Jamini Roy of the paintings to the Jamini Roy of the drawings – the issue of the folk in a contemporary artist’s personal expression
10. Amrita Sher-Gil: from the “Two Girls” to the “Ancient story-teller

Day III:

11. The artists’ collectives of the 1940s and an aspiration towards internationalism – the Calcutta Group (Kolkata) and the Progressive Artists’ Group (Mumbai)
12. Political convictions and that brief moment of a social realism in Indian art of the 1940s – Chittaprosad’s “Hungry Bengal” and Somnath Hore’s “Tebhagar diary”
13. An overview to the subsequent decades, through a random selection of examples, tracing the shifting concerns in theme and content, language and style, medium and material

Dr. Sanjoy Kumar Mallik, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati (Santiniketan), is a graduate in Painting from Visva Bharati, and holds a post-graduate and a doctoral degree in Art History from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.With a master’s-level dissertation on the pictorial language and narrative structure in 17th century ‘Malwa’ miniatures, and a doctoral thesis addressing the issue of the ‘modern’ in Bengal for the transitory decade of the nineteenforties, his interest ranges from traditional Indian art to issues of contemporary practice. His essays have appeared in the art history journals Nandan (Visva Bharati, Santiniketan), Bichitra (Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata), Lalit Kala Contemporary (Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi), Varta/discussing art (Akar Prakar Art, Kolkata) and Art & Deal (Art Konsult, New Delhi). He has contributed modest sections on the art of the nineteen-forties to the publications Indian Art: an overview” (Ed. Gayatri Sinha; Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2004), and Art and Visual Culture in India: 1857 – 2007 (Ed. Gayatri Sinha; Marg Publications, Mumbai and Bodhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2009). Apart from several catalogue notes for exhibitions, one of his major projects has been a comprehensive book on the artistic oeuvre of the artist Chittaprosad (for a private gallery based in New Delhi), the publication of which has been conceived to coincide with a touring retrospective exhibition of the artist in the near future. He had also been invited by the Lalit Kala Akademy to curate a travelling exhibition to Cairo, titled To opt is to commit/ young artists from India (October 2008).

December 14 to 16, 2010 | 9:30 am to 5:00 pm
Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai

What is curatorial practice and what does a contemporary art curator actually do? This concentrated series of lectures, discussions and workshops will provide three intensive days of training in the practice of curating a contemporary art exhibition. Prior to the class, students will be assigned several readings. Through lectures and hands-on workshops, they will learn the basis for conceptual and practical considerations necessary for the creation of a successful contemporary art exhibition. Instruction will include presentations by experienced professionals from New York and India. The class size is limited to 15 students.

A certificate, jointly issued by ICI and the Mohile Parikh Center, will be provided to students who complete the class. This course has been co-produced with the Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and the venue sponsor is Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai.

Susan Hapgood is Senior Advisor at Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. Renaud Proch is the Deputy Director of Independent Curators International (ICI), New York
Geetha Mehra is the Director of Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai.
Pooja Sood is an independent curator and the Director of Khoj International Artists’ Association, New Delhi.

Course Outline:
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Day I: Morning Session
Exhibitions: Concepts and Practical Concerns Susan Hapgood and Renaud Proch

What is curating, as a professional activity, even as a lifelong practice? How does a curator relate to artists, space, institutions, and audiences? What are the main concepts used by the curator, and how do they differ depending upon the kind of exhibition being organized? In this presentation, we will examine the shifting definition of curatorial practice as applied to different contexts, ranging from museum-based presentations, traveling shows, biennales, and non-profit alternatives, to art fair projects and gallery exhibitions. In addition, several examples of different exhibition models will be considered and discussed, including offsite installations, artists’ cooperative presentations, social practice, and others. With group discussion, the local curatorial context will also be mapped and explored.

Before breaking for lunch, the late curator Harald Szeemann’s career as a curator, and a selection of his many projects will be introduced as models for further discussion throughout the course. Szeemann’s controversial project, Documenta 5, produced in Kassel, Germany in 1972, in particular, will serve as a catalyst for discussion and critique.

Day I: Afternoon Session Curatorial Workshop
In the afternoon, a gathering of documents, photographs, press clippings and informational texts pertaining to Documenta 5 will be examined and discussed by the group together. Concepts of curatorial control, format and provocation, as evidenced by the materials in hand, will be considered, as well as institutional, artists’, and audiences’ expectations.

This material will be used as the germination point for class mini-curatorial projects. Brainstorming together as a group, broad and specific ideas will be solicited from all students. Documenta 5 will be the key stimulus for students’ presentation concepts, which may include additional outside material as well. Towards the end of the afternoon, the class will break into several smaller working groups that will each conceive an ad-hoc informal presentation to be on view by the afternoon of the third day.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Day II: Morning Session
Artist/Curator Model and Practical Considerations
Guest speaker Pooja Sood, Susan Hapgood and Renaud Proch

Following up on ideas and concepts raised in the first presentation, this session will further the understanding of differing models of curatorial practice: artists who play a quasi-curatorial role in assembling and generating programming with other artists, and art critics working as curators. The guest speaker will draw comparisons between his or her own professional curatorial platform and the example of Documenta 5.

The guest speaker, Susan Hapgood and Renaud Proch will together discuss the curatorial concerns of working with contemporary art and contemporary artists, delving into more practical considerations. This will introduce procedures and working plans, communications, budgeting, fundraising, education and events planning, and registration considerations in the development of an exhibition.

Before lunch break, an exhibition proposal checklist will be distributed and reviewed. It will include the ten key points a curator needs to consider when drawing up an initial exhibition or project plan.

Day II: Afternoon Session Curatorial Workshop
Class, Susan Hapgood and Renaud Proch

Separating into groups, the class will generate mini-exhibition concepts working with the Documenta 5 material. Each group will decide on a group presenter, and outline the concept for a brief oral presentation to the class. This exercise will show the importance of developing a message out of the material being considered in the curatorial process, which could include artworks by one or several artists, objects of design, archives, etc.

Each group will give a five-minute oral presentation of the group’s concept for open discussion and critique. Before the end of the day, the class will decide on the most successful mini-exhibition concept, and begin to develop a proposal for execution the following morning.

Thursday, December 16, 2010
Day III: Morning Session
Installation workshop
This session will show the engagement with space that is necessary to curating. Utilizing the gallery for installation, the class will mount their mini-exhibition, with time allowed for trouble-shooting, additions, and edits.

Day III: Afternoon Session Feedback session
This two-part session will allow for an informal conversation and critique of the mini-exhibition and the process developed to bring Documenta 5 to life. Then, the group will take some time to assess the process of this intensive program, reflecting on the main issues approached in the past couple of days.

Tour and lectures

Susan Hapgood and Renaud Proch will give an introduction to Documenta 5 and the participants’ work to the afternoon guest speakers, involving the class to speak briefly on their mini-exhibition premise and execution, and leading to a group discussion. Local institutional models and specific examples will be discussed by these two prominent figures in the Indian contemporary art scene. In particular, the role of individual collectors and gallerists as central figures in Indian curatorial practice will be discussed, exploring what has been working in local contexts, how, and why.

August 25 to 27, 2010 | 9:30 am to 5:00 pm
M.C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

This short course will be an introduction to philosophy of art as well as an exploration of the relationship between art and science – both historically and conceptually. There will be a set of readings which will be distributed before the sessions. Participants are expected to read them before the sessions.

Lectures:
Day I: Philosophy: Role of Philosophy in our understanding of Art and Science
Day II: Philosophy of Art: Theories of Art and Aesthetics
Day III: Art and Science: Relation between Science and Art through some aspects of the History and Philosophy of Science and its relation to Art

Sundar Sarukkai is Professor and Director, Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University, Karnataka. Sarukkai has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, Fellow of the Shimla Institute of Advanced Studies and PHISPC Associate Fellow. His research interests include Philosophy of Science, Mathematics, Postmodernism and Philosophy of Art.

April 22 to 23, 2010 | 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
M. C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

Day I:

Histories and pre-histories of the Museum:
In the long history of collecting, individuals and institutions have for centuries amassed artefacts or natural specimens. Royal treasuries, temples, universities, army camps, curiosity cabinets… all have been sites for the storage, display and even the study of objects. But these collections are fundamentally different from museums. What is a collection? And how does a collection turn into a museum? A fundamental feature of the museum is that it makes precious objects become accessible to the public in the museum. As such, museums are bound up with the ideals and processes of democracy and universal human rights. This session will look at forms and systems of pre-modern collecting, and the historical circumstances responsible for the formation of museums, taking up the Louvre and the British.

Colonial Collecting:
Colonialism led to a prolonged, intimate, and unequal encounter between European powers and distant peoples and lands. If in the early years of the Age of Exploration, exotic objects were collected as curiosities, the fascination with exotica gave way to a systematic and governmental collection and documentation of raw material, natural resources and human skills available in the colonies. The rapidly expanding empirical information had to be accommodated within new knowledge structures; the 19th c growth of museums in Europe is largely attributable to impulses from colonialism. This unit will first look at the encounter between colonial powers and ‘primitive societies,’ through specific case studies from sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania that exemplify the relationship between avowedly Enlightenment values and violence. It will then briefly trace the history of the colonial museum in India.

Nationalism and National Museums:
National museums tend to put on display the long histories of their nations’ civilization and culture, and make claims about unity, diversity and other forms of imagined communities that hold the nation together. National museums are ubiquitous today and function as ornaments and badges of honour of the nation-state. It is odd to realise then that the ‘National Museum’ is primarily a post-colonial phenomenon, one that first proliferated across newly decolonised nations of Asia and Africa in the mid-20th c. Ironically, by the end of the 20th century, the National Museum model was so successful, that it was absorbed into the fabric of museums of erstwhile colonial powers. This session looks at the National Museum- as a concept, with a specific history and location. It then studies the phenomenon of the National Museums in South Asia. How has nationalism played out in the husbanding of culture and heritage in South Asia? As India, Pakistan and Bangladesh divide and re-divide and choose different forms of self-definition, we follow the ways in which their cultural policies and key institutions reflect these changes.

Repatriation, Reparation and the Mirage of Justice:
One of the most fraught areas in international cultural relations today centres around the calls for repatriation of cultural property. Here, nations, groups, or individuals call for the return of objects that were unfairly seized from them or their ancestors, at times of war, colonialism or other extraordinary circumstances that allowed and shielded the illegal transfer of cultural property. Calls for repatriation are thus calls to redress past wrongs, and seem to be a cry for justice. At the same time those who hold these artifacts justify their continued possession by invoking the law, or by deriding ‘narrow nationalism’ against a supposedly ‘universal’ value of heritage, which unties the relationship between the object and
the place of its original location. Repatriation debates raise important issues about the law, ethics and heritage.

Museums of Modern Art:
What is it to museumize the modern? The iconic MoMA, the first museum for modern art in the world, provides an interesting case study. We study the influence of MoMA’s canon, its white cube aesthetic, and the relationship between its pure aesthetic and Cold War politics. We then briefly look at the proliferation of modern art museums in the MoMA mode outside the West– in Iran, the Philippines, and India. What do these museums signify? Finally: for the past twenty years, the iconic modern art museum has been not MoMA but the Guggenheim, whose franchise model has prompted critics to call it McGuggenheim

Day II:

Blockbuster Exhibitions:
The exhibition of treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1976 is counted as the first blockbuster exhibition. Since then, the blockbuster has become a phenomenon, if not a genre, of the museum world. Inevitably, the emergence of the blockbuster phenomenon is accompanied by severe critiques. We use debates around blockbuster exhibitions to examine the assumptions about the arts, public good, entertainment and market forces.

Holocaust Museums:
Another form of museum that has emerged in the 1970’s, the holocaust museum has become an established genre that has rapidly proliferated across the globe. Embedded in legacies of unspeakable horror, and speaking from a moral position against amnesia – and at the same time developing a tourist circuit, what does the holocaust museum do? We study a number of museums dedicated to memorializing the Jewish holocaust at the hands of the Nazis in WWII, and go on to see the proliferation of the holocaust museum model at sites in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Rwanda.

Kavita Singh is currently Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she teaches courses on the history of Indian painting and museum and curatorial studies. She has published on Sikh art, Indian folk and courtly painting and the history of museums in India.

February 18 to 20, 2010 | 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
M. C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

Isaac Bashevis Singer once commented that literature should describe the absurd but it should never become absurd itself. It is a poignant remark, especially in the context of reading and writing in the contemporary domain. It is a time when tacky literature, chic literature, literature pre-empting an audience, etc are ruining the sublime thrill of the written word. Alongside, academic jargons have robbed much of the fun in approaching a text. Philip Roth, writing about a conference held in the honour of Saul Bellow, remarked how agitated Bellow became listening to the jargonized discussions about his work and he left the hall, fuming. So its time to re-read, revisit, and reclaim the thrilling verve of literature. Alongside, the passionate curiosity about writers, writing, and the involvement of the readers needs to be asserted. Otherwise, the critical faculty would lose itself in little zones of aridity dotted with useless scholastic hyperbole. This would be the intent of the instructor. He would expose the audience to the works which are part of the accepted canon and also those which haven’t been institutionalized. The basic thrust of the series would be on writers, the creative act, and the interventions of the reader. Sure, a few theories that have effected a paradigm shift in approaching literature would be discussed. In brief, the course would highlight the symbiotic act between reading/writing, between readers and writers, not to mention of the ways writers view themselves one another through their societal and individual prism.

Day 1: The Persona

1. A Writer’s Perspective on another Writer: Maxim Gorky’s profile on Leo Tolstoy
2. The image of Artists/Writers in Novels:

o Doctor Zhivago
o Doctor Faustus
o The Picture of Dorian Gray
o Death of Virgil

3. Why do I Write? Writers analysing their own Self and Craft

4. The Writer and the Repressive State- Societal Norms: Attitudes and Responses

o Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
o Milan Kundera
o Boris Pasternak

5. Death of the Author: Roland Barthes

Day 2: The Crucible: Themes that act as leitmotifs in literature

1. Guilt:

o Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime And Punishment
o Albert Camus: The Stranger

2. The Inexorable March of Death:

o J.M. Coetzee: The Age Of Iron
o Susan Sontag: The Way We Live Now
o Thomas Mann: Death in Venice
o Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories

3. Absence as Presence:

o Toni Morrison: Beloved
o Juan Rulfo: Luvina
o Rabindranath Tagore: Shey

4. Threaded by a River:

o Mikhail Sholokhov: And Quiet Flows The Don
o Ritwick Ghatak: Titash Ekti Nadir Naam
o Amitav Ghosh: The Hungry Tide
o V.S. Naipaul: A Bend In The River
o Manik Bandopadhyay: The Boatman Of The River Padma

5. Illness as Metaphor:

o Anton Chekhov: Ward No. 6
o Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain

Day 3: The Act of Reading/Inheriting and Preserving the Literary Quotient

1. Italo Calvino: Why Read The Classics?
2. Towards a Non-Western Paradigm: Edward Said and Chinua Achebe
3. How Writers Read: Orhan Pamuk, Jean-Paul Sartre and Amitav Ghosh
4. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
5. Alice Walker: In Search Of Our Mother’s Garden

Shiladitya Sarkar is a painter and writer. He was educated in Presidency College and the University of Kolkata and read Political Science for his Bachelor’s and Master’s respectively. Literature, Philosophy and Cultural History are also his areas of interest. He worked briefly as a journalist with Indian Express and Times of India. Starting with his first solo exhibition at Chitrakoot, Kolkata, Shiladitya’s paintings have been exhibited in the UK, the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, West Indies, Indonesia, and the UAE. He has also participated in solo and group shows at Jehangir Art Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, Lalit Kala Academy, Bharat Bhavan and in many private galleries in India. Shiladitya’s book, “Thirst of a Minstrel” – a biography of Ganesh Pyne was published by Rupa in 2005. He was also the invited writer for the exhibition: Modern Myths-Changing Images in Indian art, University of Texas. He writes on contemporary art for Art India Magazine and is currently working on a novel and a book on the painter Surya Prakash.

November 25, 2009 | 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
M.C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

This course will focus on the mysteries of the human brain and mind that have fascinated scientists, writers, philosophers and pretty much all of humankind for millennia. The perspective of looking at the brain, and what it does, will come from the window of modern neuroscience. We will look at how the brain is built, what it can do, how it can change and what happens when things go wrong. Using specific examples from how the brain works in learning, memory, sensation, perception, movement and emotion we will lead into the unanswered questions in neuroscience.

Lectures:
1. Building the Brain
2. The Brain in dialogue with the world – Sensation and Perception
3. The Running Head – It’s all about Motion
4. Learning and Memory
5. The Plastic Brain – use it or lose it!
6. Repairing the Brain – When things go wrong

Dr. Vidita Vaidya is a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Her research interests are in the neurobiology of emotion, with a particular focus on understanding the changes that take place in the brain in psychiatric disorders. Vidita is a Senior Wellcome Trust Research fellow and serves on the editorial boards of both national and international journals. She is actively involved in public outreach activities for Neuroscience and finds that this dialogue enriches the research queries that her laboratory pursues.

October 27 to 29, 2009 | 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
M. C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

The course is designed to draw the participants’ attention to some of the salient ways of looking at questions of cinema, and image making and meaning in general. The nature of the medium will be introduced through analysis of the structure and sequencing of representative films; some film historical subjects such as early cinema and Indian film style; the variety of filmmaking with examples of documentary and experimental films; and cinema’s position in contemporary social consciousness. Each day’s program will conclude with a screening of an important feature length film that will be followed by discussion and analysis.

Day 1:
1. Structure and Image Construction: Organization of time, space and event in composition
2. Metaphor and how it works in cinema
3. Principles of film analysis

Day 2:
4. Visual Art and Cinema: How illusionist Renaissance and Baroque painting anticipates cinema and modernist art deviates from photographic realism.
5. The different kinds of films: Documentary and Experimental Cinema

Day 3:
6. Early cinema and Indian film style: Traditions of frontality, addressing and ‘inserting’ the spectator in the frame.
7. Classic or the ‘analytic-dramatic’ style contrasted with modern strategies of storytelling developed in cinema.

Suresh Chabria taught Political Science at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai before joining the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune as Professor of Film Appreciation. He was Director of the National Film Archive of India, Pune from 1992—1998 during which period he initiated several restorations and programming events showcasing Indian film heritage. He has published several articles on cinema and a book, Light of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema 1912-1934 which is perhaps the most authoritative publication on the subject. Associated with the Film Society movement for more than 30 years, he is best known as a teacher and his courses and workshops on film appreciation are much sought after.

May 20 to 22, 2009 | 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
M.C. Ghia Hall, Mumbai

Without presupposing any previous acquaintance with Sanskrit or English philosophical texts, this course is designed to introduce the audience to some central questions of classical Indian metaphysics, logic and epistemology. The aim will be to dispel the popular misconception that all Indian philosophy is religious or mystical. In order to give a flavor of how meticulously analytic and rationally argumentative Indian philosophy has always been, we shall select three questions and go through some conflicting answers to them with supporting arguments. These are:

1. What is the nature of darkness (which has been the standard metaphor for Ignorance)?
2. What is the nature of that self which desires pleasure, power and knowledge but is covered with the shadow of its own ignorance? How is the self related to its ego-marked body?
3. What is that knowledge that can remove this ignorance? Why and how should we live and die in this world?

The last question will be discussed in the context of a close study of Isha-Upanishad, the briefest but deepest Vedic text on the purpose of human life. As a glimpse of the diversity of alternative interpretations of the same philosophical texts, we shall study both Samkara’s (8th century) and Sri Aurobindo’s (20th century) interpretations of this Upanishad, and critically review their sharp differences.

Lectures:

Day 1:
1. The Debating Hall: a brief overview of Indian philosophical systems
2. Are Indian philosophies mostly mystical and spiritual? Evidences for a negative answer.
3. Are Indian philosophies dogmatic and God-obsessed? Skepticism, atheism and materialism in classical Indian philosophies.
4. Rationality in Indian Philosophy: The basic structure of Indian Logic
5. How could something come out of nothing? Inquiry into the origin of the universe and the theme of darkness concealed by darkness.

Day 2:
6. What is Darkness? Is a shadow anything more than absence of light? Rethinking an Ancient debate between Nyaya and Mimamsa through exemplary treatment of Shadows in European Paintings and in the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci.
7. What is absence? If Darkness (tamas) or Ignorance” (avidyā) has causal power could it be a merely negative absence?
8. What is ignorance? What do I know when I know that I am ignorant of something or do not know what I am?
9. What does this word “I” refer to? The problem of the self.
10. Nyaya arguments for the existence of the permanent soul (Atman): An exercise in critiquing and defending a sound inference.

Day 3:
11. Whose Wealth? Whose Knowledge? Whose mental states? A Critique of the concept of ownership and possession.
12. Enjoy a full life by giving up attachment: The metaphysical basis of the ethics of the Isha Upanishad, verse 1.
13. Food, hunger and the Body: Upanishads on corporeality and consumption.
14. What is death? How should we die? Plato’s and Bhagavadgita’s arguments for immortality of the soul compared in the context of Upanishads’ concept of dying.
15. Overcoming death: How our actions outlive us. Does work bind or release the self? The murky concept of Karma.

Arindam Chakrabarti is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, in the USA, for the last 12 years. Educated at Presidency College, Kolkata, and at Oxford University England, he specializes in Contemporary Western Philosophy of Language and Analytic Metaphysics and Philosophy of Mind. He has also been trained in traditional Sanskrit logic and epistemology over the last thirty years. His publications include three books in English, two in Bengali and one in Sanskrit on issues of contemporary Western philosophical logic and theories of knowledge. He is also interested in classical Indian aesthetics and is currently writing a book on the moral psychology of emotions.