Reading List Leaders is a four-part aural gathering recorded as a podcast series by visual artist and poet Vidha Saumya. In each of the episodes Vidha hosts conversations and readings with her invited ‘Reading List Leaders’: Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar, Kamla Bhasin, Paromita Vohra and Arvind Ramachandran.
Reading List Leaders is an extension of Vidha Saumya’s poem and wall mural Reading List, the first work in a series of artistic commissions at Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s office space. Reading List proposes a list of 96 authors from India who should be in global reading lists. This list is potentially endless. The work was commissioned in the context of the Rehearsing Hospitalities public programme 2019-2023.
“As I read my way through list after list, helpfully extended towards me by institutions, visiting lecturers, and seminars in Finland, I encountered many silences. And to mend those silences, these names were my instinctual response.” (Vidha Saumya, 2019).
Reading List Leaders was initially planned as weekly gatherings for reading and listening in the Frame Contemporary Art Finland office. Restrictions on the act of gathering in Finland, India and throughout the world due to COVID-19 and political unrest have made weekly physical gatherings impossible. In the podcast series we can continue the project in a complimentary and meaningful way. Still a place to gather, the online podcast conversations and readings activate, archive and share both the under-celebrated Indian writers who appear on Vidha’s Reading List, and the Reading List Leaders themselves.
Reading List Leaders include co-founder of the Dalit Panther Archive Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar, Indian developmental feminist activist, poet, author and social scientist Kamla Bhasin, filmmaker, writer and founder of multi-media project Agents of Ishq Paromita Vohra, and co-organiser of the Feminist and Anti-Racist Night School Arvind Ramachandran, along with visual artist and poet Vidha Saumya.
Each hour-long session will be in various Indian languages.
Sound design by artist Kim Modig (Orker).
About Vidha Saumya
Photo by Aman Askarizad.
Vidha Saumya is a drawer, poet, cook and bookmaker. Her recent solo exhibition ‘Monumentless Moments: the Utopia of Figureless Plinths’ comprising seven books of poems and a Reader, was on view at MAA-tila project Space, Helsinki in March 2020. Vidha Saumya’s poem and wall mural ‘Reading List’ was the first work in a series of artistic commissions at Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s office space within the context of the Rehearsing Hospitalities public programme 2019-2023. She has read her poems in festivals and seminars such as Baltic Circle Festival and Runoviikko Poetry Festival amongst others. She is a founding member of the Museum of Impossible Forms – a cultural centre located in Kontula, East-Helsinki, and is currently working on the project ‘Paper, pulp, words, books: recipes for counterculture rebellion’ supported by TAIKE, Finland.
Rehearsing Hospitalities is Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s public programme for 2019-2023. It connects artists, curators and other practitioners in the field of contemporary art and beyond to build up and mediate new practices, understandings and engagements with diverse hospitalities. Read more about the programme on Frame's webpage.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Reading List Leaders is a four-part aural gathering recorded as a podcast series by visual artist and poet Vidha Saumya. In each of the episodes Vidha hosts conversations and readings with her invited ‘Reading List Leaders’: Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar, Kamla Bhasin, Paromita Vohra and Arvind Ramachandran.
Reading List Leaders is an extension of Vidha Saumya’s poem and wall mural Reading List, the first work in a series of artistic commissions at Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s office space. Reading List proposes a list of 96 authors from India who should be in global reading lists. This list is potentially endless. The work was commissioned in the context of the Rehearsing Hospitalities public programme 2019-2023.
“As I read my way through list after list, helpfully extended towards me by institutions, visiting lecturers, and seminars in Finland, I encountered many silences. And to mend those silences, these names were my instinctual response.” (Vidha Saumya, 2019).
Reading List Leaders was initially planned as weekly gatherings for reading and listening in the Frame Contemporary Art Finland office. Restrictions on the act of gathering in Finland, India and throughout the world due to COVID-19 and political unrest have made weekly physical gatherings impossible. In the podcast series we can continue the project in a complimentary and meaningful way. Still a place to gather, the online podcast conversations and readings activate, archive and share both the under-celebrated Indian writers who appear on Vidha’s Reading List, and the Reading List Leaders themselves.
Reading List Leaders include co-founder of the Dalit Panther Archive Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar, Indian developmental feminist activist, poet, author and social scientist Kamla Bhasin, filmmaker, writer and founder of multi-media project Agents of Ishq Paromita Vohra, and co-organiser of the Feminist and Anti-Racist Night School Arvind Ramachandran, along with visual artist and poet Vidha Saumya.
Each hour-long session will be in various Indian languages.
Sound design by artist Kim Modig (Orker).
About Vidha Saumya
Photo by Aman Askarizad.
Vidha Saumya is a drawer, poet, cook and bookmaker. Her recent solo exhibition ‘Monumentless Moments: the Utopia of Figureless Plinths’ comprising seven books of poems and a Reader, was on view at MAA-tila project Space, Helsinki in March 2020. Vidha Saumya’s poem and wall mural ‘Reading List’ was the first work in a series of artistic commissions at Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s office space within the context of the Rehearsing Hospitalities public programme 2019-2023. She has read her poems in festivals and seminars such as Baltic Circle Festival and Runoviikko Poetry Festival amongst others. She is a founding member of the Museum of Impossible Forms – a cultural centre located in Kontula, East-Helsinki, and is currently working on the project ‘Paper, pulp, words, books: recipes for counterculture rebellion’ supported by TAIKE, Finland.
Rehearsing Hospitalities is Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s public programme for 2019-2023. It connects artists, curators and other practitioners in the field of contemporary art and beyond to build up and mediate new practices, understandings and engagements with diverse hospitalities. Read more about the programme on Frame's webpage.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the second Reading List Leaders podcast, Vidha Saumya hosts writer, activist and social scientist Kamla Bhasin.
Kamla’s reading list includes: Corona Ke Zamaane Mein (In the Times of Corona), written on March 26, 2020; Kya Main Make-up Karti Hoon (Do I Use Make-Up); Yeh To Meri Marzi Hai (It’s My Wish); Mere Naarivaad (My Feminisms); Aao Hum Auratien Apni Jagah Banayein (Let’s Make Space); Khamoshi (Silence); Khoobsoorat Ya Khoobseerat (); Me Too; Because I Am A Girl, I Must Study
These simple poems are sung by feminist groups in various countries in South Asia.
Languages: Hindi-Urdu, English
About Kamla Bhasin
A social scientist by training, Kamla Bhasin has been actively engaged with issues related to gender, education, identity politics, militarization, human rights and democracy since 1970. She has written extensively on gender, women’s empowerment, participatory and sustainable development, participatory training, media and communication. Currently, she works with ‘Sangat’ – A Feminist Network as Adviser; ‘JAGORI’ – A Women’s Resource and Training Centre; and ‘Jagori Rural Charitable Trust’ as an active member. She is the South Asia Coordinator of’ One Billion Rising’ – a global campaign to end violence against women and girls; Co-Chair of the worldwide network ‘Peace Women Across the Globe’; and member of ‘South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR)’. Prior to this, she worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for 27 years.
Summary of Kamla Bhasin’s poems
Kya Main Makeup Karti Hoon? (Do I Use Makeup?)
In this free-verse poem, Kamla Bhasin does a wordplay on the use of make-up, as a word and as an action. Asked innocently by a woman in her audience if she uses make-up, Kamla responds, yes, I do, I make up my mind, make-up my dreams, makeup my intentions, makeup promises. not satisfied with the answer, the woman asks again, “But do you use make-up on your body and face?”. Unperturbed, Kamla replies, “Yes, I do. I have had a close and long relationship with my body, I respect it, I accept it as it is, I don’t compare my body with beauty queens, and since I am in love with my body, I decorate it, I spend an hour only with my body, I take it out on a walk, strengthen its limbs through yoga, all my life I’ve refined my body, and the body supported me all along, we’ve both turned 73, my body and I, and we’ve both leaned on each other through this life. But, dear friend, my makeup if you mean what I call fake-up, then that is something I haven’t done. My face, body, it’s features and its colour are appealing to me in their original form, I haven’t succumbed to the market of beauty, I have avoided all that is fake - fake faces too. So my dear, curious friend, people have had to like me just as I am and as they lovingly stroke my silver hair or laugh alongside my countless wrinkles, they’ve shown they’re not affected by my ageing body because I am always just as I have been...”
…
Hum Sikandar Hain, Shikaar Nahin / We Are Winners, Not Prey
This poem narrates the difference between a victim and a survivor. It says that patriarchy may have assigned us as being a victim - a pawn, a stooge, gullible and weak, oppressed, unaware. We are preyed upon in the confines of our own homes and often the assailant is our own kin. Whether in the form of foeticide, infanticide, hunger, unattended, neglect, rape, property-less, and often by simply curbing our freedom. But now it's time for some good news. The good news is that even if not all, but many women are no longer weak, incoherent, we no longer care for what others may say, our hearts don't cry helplessly, were no longer oppressed, entrapped. We are committed, alive, strong. We are no longer prey, we are winners. We are forerunners of our own destiny. We persevere but are not looking for conflict. Neither are we a prey not want to prey on anyone. We know the trauma of being oppressed and hence we foresee a world where there are no unequals, where we freedom and happiness are found at all intersections.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.