Kochi Art, Culture, Literature, Kochi-Muziris Biennale

[mohammedirshad06]

The above teaser is BBC Documentary of Kochi Biennale Films... This promo has gone on air from yesterday onwards in many BBC channels... The BBC also has made a detailed narration of events in BBC Radio also.

[vin2000]

Nammade TSR jillennu Muziris adichukondu pokan nokkunnu kallanmar....

[mohammedirshad06]

Originally Posted by vin2000

Nammade TSR jillennu Muziris adichukondu pokan nokkunnu kallanmar....

Ohhh, so you confirmed, Muziris is in TSR? So tommorrow Tamilians also can say, Keralites has stolen Muziris, as they are also researching whether Murichipattanam (tamil name of Muziris) is near Karur, where they believe as one of the capital of Imperial Cheras?

Muziris is still a lost city and research is going on, with a primary belief its located inbetween Paravur-Kodungallor belt.... It doesn't restrict within 1957 Kerala Niyamsabha sanctioned district delimitation laws....

The heritage and legacy of Vanchinadu is shared by all people of Kerala.... Travancore Rajas call themselves as Vanchinadupalakan, Kodungallor Rajas as Vanchieshan, Kollam as Kulasheskharapuram or Kochi as Vanchikovil Adikari or Kozhikode Zamorin as Vanchirakshapurshan or Vallunadu for Vanchinadu's Manithara and things like that.....

[vin2000]

Originally Posted by mohammedirshad06

Ohhh, so you confirmed, Muziris is in TSR? So tommorrow Tamilians also can say, Keralites has stolen Muziris, as they are also researching whether Murichipattanam (tamil name of Muziris) is near Karur, where they believe as one of the capital of Imperial Cheras?

Muziris is still a lost city and research is going on, with a primary belief its located inbetween Paravur-Kodungallor belt.... It doesn't restrict within 1957 Kerala Niyamsabha sanctioned district delimitation laws....

The heritage and legacy of Vanchinadu is shared by all people of Kerala.... Travancore Rajas call themselves as Vanchinadupalakan, Kodungallor Rajas as Vanchieshan, Kollam as Kulasheskharapuram or Kochi as Vanchikovil Adikari or Kozhikode Zamorin as Vanchirakshapurshan or Vallunadu for Vanchinadu's Manithara and things like that.....

Yeah, I confirmed for I have more faith in MGS's knowledge than in yours. Btw, thanks for that wonderful history lesson. A small one from my side, the fame that Kochi enjoys today is due to Kodungallur's misfortune. It is said that the same flood in the Periyar that destroyed the harbor there opened up the one at Kochi.

[mohammedirshad06]

Originally Posted by vin2000

Yeah, I confirmed for I have more faith in MGS's knowledge than in yours. Btw, thanks for that wonderful history lesson. A small one from my side, the fame that Kochi enjoys today is due to Kodungallur's misfortune. It is said that the same flood in the Periyar that destroyed the harbor there opened up the one at Kochi.

May your faith guide you to best! Amen to that !!!

Was Kochinites did something to destroy Kodungallor thro' the great floods 1341? Did our great great great forefathers lobbied with Nature, to do that?

Please be sensible and relevant to the thread!!

[vin2000]

Originally Posted by mohammedirshad06

May your faith guide you to best! Amen to that !!!

Was Kochinites did something to destroy Kodungallor thro' the great floods 1341? Did our great great great forefathers lobbied with Nature, to do that?

Please be sensible and relevant to the thread!!

One will never know whether your forefathers lobbied with nature or not but that is less likely as most probably they had had their origins elsewhere. What was Kochi's history before '1341' after all? Even the Royals of Kochi had their roots in Vanneri near Guruvayur.

So, for the time being, please pride yourself in your region's false heritage.

Cheers,

[Malayaali]

Kochi Style!

[kochi_]

Originally Posted by Malayaali

Kochi Style!

leave him. He will be even fighting with his brother/sister telling, you got the share of father's property because his father decide to produce them. Cant really believe how people think.

[vin2000]

Originally Posted by Malayaali

Kochi Style!

Your pic? No surprise there! Aa affluent ennezhuthi vechirikkunnathil cheriya parishkaram varuthiyal nannayi cherum tta.

[sree_ec]

Vannallo adutha vanamala

[Malayaali]

Kochi-Muziris Biennale records 10,000 footfalls on single day

COCHIN: The introduction of entry fee for Cochin-Muziris Biennale did not deter visitors from thronging the venues on Sunday.
The organisers said as many as 10,000 people from different walks of life visited the biennale venues on Sunday. The entry fee fixed for adults is Rs50 and children, including school and college students Rs10.

The enthusiasm has prompted the organisers to keep all the Biennale open on Monday, which is otherwise day-off for maintenance.

The main venue, Aspinwall House in Fort Cochin, witnessed the visits of quite a few public figures and cultural personalities from abroad as well. They included Kerala Social Welfare Minister M K Muneer, former state culture minister M A Baby, Iranian filmmaker-artist Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Swiss Ambassador to India Linus von Castelmur besides Malayalam film actor Vineeth Kumar.

Muneer, who spent two hours enjoying the exhibits, said Cochin has currently become centre of attraction in the global art map, courtesy the Biennale. “We are lucky to be seeing world-class art at our doorstep. It is a matter of pride for Kerala,” he noted.

“I have come here as an artist myself, not as a minister,” the 50-year-old ghazal lyricist added. “I’ll revisit the Biennale sooner than later.”

Kandahar director Makhmalbaf, who came to Aspinwall House with his family, said the Biennale symbolised a kaleidoscope of world art.

“Art and artists give strength to any society. Like with other things in India, art too is varied in this country. Democracy means a variety of sounds. That finds reflection in the Biennale here,” he said, accompanied by daughters Samir and Hana.

“Art is true. We need to share it. I’m happy to have attended this event,” the 55-year-old filmmaker said.

Baby, who was one of the architects of the idea of India’s first Biennale, said the event has succeeded as a tool of social intervention in a better way than was conceived initially. “That way, I have only love left for those who raked up a controversy behind this endeavour,”

He said the Biennale has itself given a reply to the critics who questioned the benefit the event would provide to Kerala’s artists. “The future will tell us the exactness of the new sensibility that the Biennale has given to the art scene in the state. It is the beginning of a new art sensibility for is people,” he added.

Baby, like Ambassador Dr Castelmur, visited the Biennale with his family.

Earlier in the day, T K Ashraf, chairman of a standing committee under the Corporation of Cochin, gave away the first ticket to the first visitor at the sea-facing Aspinwall House. The queue was long right from the start of the day.

In the afternoon, co-curators Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu led a three-hour ‘photo walk’ that gave 100-plus camera people a better idea of the installations and paintings at the Biennale venue.

news@khaleejtimes.com

[Malayaali]

Five-day ’Chavittu Natakam’ fest at Biennale

Kochi: The first-ever confluence and interaction of all the existing schools of Indias only classical Christian dance-drama will be the central episode of a five-day 'Chavittu Natakam' festival to be held this week as part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Chuvati 12, being convened in coastal Gothuruth village near North Paravur from Dec 26, will host half-a-dozen shows of the five-century-old Kerala ballet that has flourished in a Latin Catholic context and revels in European ballets aesthetics as well as costumes. 'Chavittu Natakam' is believed to have originated in the 16th century after the arrival of Portuguese on the Malabar Coast even as some of its playback scores are in the ancient Dravidian language of Tamil.

The highlight of the fete will be a day-long seminar on Dec 29, when scholars, artists, aesthetes and buffs of Chavittu Natakam will exchange ideas that would be subsequently published as a book, according to organisers of the pioneering festival. This seminar, which will be part the Annual Rings literary space of the Biennale, will see a lecture-demonstration by senior Chavittu Natakam performer Thambi Kadakath.

"The symposium will have a second phase in end-January involving exchange of viewpoints by Chavittu Natakam performers, academicians, critics and art lovers", Ramachandran said. 'The ideas emerging out of it would also form content for the proposed tome. The effort is to contemporarise the art form".

The services of late Sebina Raphy and Georgekutty Asan to Chavittu Natakam will be commemorated at the fete, according to the functionaries of SAC, Gothuruth. A concrete statue of Chinnathambi Annavi, the founder of the art form, is being done by Anto George.

The festival will start off on Wednesday with the play St George, directed by A.N.Anirudhan and performed by the Kerala Chavittu Nataka Academy, Gothuruthu. Julias Caeser, directed by Britto Vincent, Brijeena Charitham, directed by Fr. V.P. Joseph Valiyaveettil and based on the ancient script of Annavi, will be staged. Antony Kadakath will present a solo performance of Chavittu natakam based on the story Roxilin the Villain under the auspices of Peoples Arts Club, Gothuruth.

[Malayaali]

‘Biennale will have lasting influence’

The benefits of art will take time to reflect on society, England-based Belgian art scholar Chris Dercon said at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale venue here on Monday. “Not many seem to have sensed the significance of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. It would take at least five to six years to get a feel of the contribution of the event to the local culture,” the director of Tate Modern Art Gallery, London, said.

The event in Kochi can be called the Venice Biennale of Asia, he said in the ‘Lets Talk’ section at the Aspinwall House in Fort Kochi.

Dercon called upon the Kerala government to support the biennale, noting that the event reflects the latest trends in the world of contemporary art.

It is the common people who come in hordes to attend such festivals, he said. Earlier, P Rajeeve MP, and Hibi Eden MLA, visited the venue. The biennale will be open to visitors on Christmas day.

[Malayaali]

Scholar sees shades of Venice

Kochi: The Kochi Muziris Biennale can rightly be termed the Venice biennale of Asia, according to Belgian art scholar Chris Dercon who is also the director of the Tate Modern art gallery in London.

The response to the art event here over the last two days says that “we are not dumb or numb”, and this city cannot be a place of decay.

There is this concept in the art world too “where one buys for low and sells for high”. When places like Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai have been trying to get on to the world art map from nothing to boast of as a legacy, Kochi has gone way ahead. Looking at the response of the local people, it was for the government to come forward and support the event, he added.

There have been voices of dissent, which he says, are welcome. This has been the case always and it will take a few years to sense the benefits of art, he said when asked about the opposition to this art event from a section of artists. “It is the case everywhere where those refused will come together and at a later stage they will be refused by a new team”, he added.

Dercon recalled how an exhibition of Amrita Shergill’s works had been organized in Munich with great difficulty, but the same exhibition later in London met with a huge response.

He was all praise for artist Amar Kanwar whose work at the biennale had been attracting crowds and also how even renowned artist Subodh Gupta was willing to leave the space allotted to him for the work of another veteran Vivan Sundaram just because it was fascinating. Art is not to be looked at from the point of capital gains.

[mohammedirshad06]

Kumbalangi got its Open Air Performance Center

India's first Model Eco-tourist village- Kumbalangi now got an open air amphitheater, that can accommodate 1000 people with stage facilities for conducting regular arts performance within children's park....

[Malayaali]

Kochi Biennale enters its third week

KOCHI: With Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India's first biennale, entered its third week, the event has registered an impressive 75,000 footfalls across its dozen-odd venues in the first fortnight.

According to the Kochi Biennale Foundation, even on the leanest day, the number of visitors doesn't go below 4,000, and there has not been any dearth of visitors even after the show was ticketed from December 23.

Majority of the visitors are students, and a good number of foreign tourists too turn up at the venues. A palpable rise in tourists is another effect of the biennale for the city.

Writer NS Madhavan, who visited the Biennale today, said the festival could be conducted only with the help of financial aid from the government "at least till its first four editions".

"The Biennale throws up unfamiliar sights and images. It is when artists — and not bureaucrats — work together that such festivals become meaningful," said the writer who was accompanied by his journalist wife Sheela Reddy.

Madhavan will be the guest of honour on Friday at the Chavittu Natakam festival to staged in Gothuruth near North Paravur as part of the biennale.

Award-winning filmmaker Shyamaprasad also visited the Aspinwall House, the main venue for the Biennale. "Here, the common people get a chance to know world-class art," he said. He was accompanied by his wife Sheeba and daughter Sivakami.

Model-turned-actor Parvathy Omanakkuttan and hairstylist Ambika Pillai were the other celebrities who visited the show on Thursday.

[vin2000]

http://dailypioneer.com/nation/11924...ks-up-row.html

Does freedom of expression allow an artist to display the flags and insignias of nationally and internationally banned outfits and to convene a summit of such groups in the name of art? Currently, this is the point on which the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the first such event to be hosted in India, is being discussed.

The subject of discussion is a political installation by Dutch artist Jonas Staal in which the flags of 45 banned outfits — 24 Indian and 21 from outside —have been featuring at Aspinwall House in Fort Kochi, the main venue of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which has been mired in controversies right from the stage of inception.

Staal is planning to hold a New World Summit, a gathering of representatives of banned national and international outfits to mark the conclusion of the biennale in March. The summit at the Kochi biennale, with the theme History According to Resistance Movements, will be the third such programme being organised. The first was held in Berlin in May this year.

The Kochi Police have already made it clear that the summit would not be allowed to be held if it is being planned as a meeting of banned organisations. Police officials also said that Staal’s installation at the biennale would be removed if it was against the laws of the land. The police have sought legal opinion on this matter.

Staal says the history of resistance movements will be supplementary history and that all banned organisations will be invited indiscriminately to the summit to present their ideologies. But police are not impressed. The Intelligence wing of the State police is already holding a probe into the matter and the AFDGP (Intelligence) has been given a preliminary report.

The banned organisations represented by billboards at Staal’s political installation include the Taliban, LTTE, LeT, Indian Mujahiddin, ULFA, etc. Staal and the biennale organisers vouch that they are not violating any Indian or international law with the pavilion or the summit plan but they are well within the realm of legality.

“We give freedom to make creative work. That has been given to Staal also,” says Bose Krishnamachari, a leader-organiser of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. According to Staal, the summit would not be illegal as an outfit banned in one country need not be banned in another. Also, there could be people linked to a banned outfit who are free to travel and talk, he says.

According to the Dutch artist, the plan is dedicated to providing ‘alternative parliaments’ hosting organisations that are excluded from democracy. He also justifies the pavilion with billboards of banned groups saying that it is “an artistic exploration of a political space that could serve the diplomatic purpose of creating a space between the State and listed outfits”.

The fact remains that the police in Kochi are confused over the legal sanctity of the installation exhibited openly and the open plan for a summit of banned outfits. “Even legal experts are a bit confused. It is one thing to work in or for a banned outfit and it is another to talk about it. You can’t book a person for doing the latter,” said a leading lawyer of the Kerala High Court.

The police are also finding it difficult to openly intervene in the issue due to the presence of several distinguished personalities and top bureaucrats in the biennale as its trustees. The event was inaugurated on December 12 by none other than Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.

[mohammedirshad06]

Try try try... Untill succeed...

Thats what vested interested groups, who wants to scuttle India's first biennale and doesn't want to lose their monopoly over arts getting into public space, believes now....

Anyway, I hope Kochi will definitely hoist 3rd session of New World Summit, after Berlin and Leiden....

[KMC]

Originally Posted by mohammedirshad06

Try try try... Untill succeed...

Thats what vested interested groups, who wants to scuttle India's first biennale and doesn't want to lose their monopoly over arts getting into public space, believes now....

Anyway, I hope Kochi will definitely hoist 3rd session of New World Summit, after Berlin and Leiden....

Event is a blockbuster ...thr was unprecedebted crowd yestrday...
So many people ...

[vin2000]

Kochi Biennale – Excuse to Promote Terrorism ?
December 25, 2012
By gokulvarmank
Aum Shinrikyo, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, Al’Qaida, Abu Sayyaf, Abu Nidal group, Babbar Khalsa, CIRA, Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin, Hezbollah, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, IRA, INLA, Indian Mujaheddin, Khalistan Commando Force, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Laskhar e Taiba, RIRA, SIMI, Tehreek e Taliban, ULFA, UVF.



These are just a few of the numerous terror organizations that have been invited as part of an event called the “New World Summit” that is to be conducted under the aegis of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012 which started from December 12, 2012 and shall continue till March 13, 2013. The objective is “ providing “alternative parliaments” hosting organizations that currently find themselves excluded from democracy, for example by means of so-called international designated terrorist lists.”



Sounds quite innocent enough, but do read through the list above once more. Terrorist groups who have blood of countless innocents on their hands. Are we really going to offer them a platform to advertise their hatred and excuses?



I had visited the much touted Biennale today, on the 25th of December 2012. I was enjoying the range of contemporary arts that are being exhibited through several venues in the Aspinwall compound at Fort Kochi when suddenly I noted the special pavilion with several flags forming a ring around it. Some of these flags were quite familiar to me, as a person who is a follower of military and security issues worldwide. I ventured closer and was aghast to see the flags of Indian Mujaheddin and Irish Republican Army, two organizations that I could recognize with the greatest ease by their flags. The plaque placed at the center of the pavilion provided information about the “New World Summit” being planned by the Netherlands artist Jonas Staal which was planning to conduct their third summit at Kochi in March 2013. The first summit was conducted at Berlin in May 2012 and the second is to be conducted at Netherlands on December 29th, 2012. I was shocked that despite such blatant advertisement of terrorism, no one, not the politicians, nor the media who have been hyping much about the Biennale for ages noticed it.



Artists are often accorded their artistic freedom for nihilism and anarchy, for their spirits truly ought to be unbridled by restrictions. However these freedoms ought to stop at the point at which they transgress the limits of art and venture into political activism. Sure these terrorists may have various benign and noble excuses for what they profess, but their actions have nothing benign about them. From Aum Shinrikyo, who released the Sarin nerve gas in a crowded Tokyo metro killing 13 and injuring nearly a thousand innocent people to Indian Mujaheddin who have claimed responsibility for various terrorist bombing attacks all over India in the past decades, do these organizations deserve their voice and cause be accorded legitimacy at venues such as this? An art event of international stature, an event that was welcomed whole heartedly by the people of Kochi and Kerala, should that good will be showered upon these terrorist groups?



I am a firm believer of the motto that the best terrorist is a dead terrorist, so feel free to paint me as biased. But the day you are giving mainstream voice and legitimacy to terrorist groups, who have killed thousands of innocents for no matter whatever cause, you are joining the cause of terrorism yourself. Germany and Netherlands are nations that have not faced much terrorism in recent years. But I doubt even Germany or Netherlands would have permitted these summits to take place if any organization that took German or Dutch lives were being given advocacy there? I for one do not see Black September, Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, Red Army Faction, Red Youth or the Japanese Red Army being offered a chance to make their case for “alternative parliament”. I dont see the activists of the Free Maluku Selatan (Moluccas) being given speaking opportunities at Netherlands?



We in India, we face attacks from several of these terrorist groups. I suppose affront to Indian sensibilities does not matter as much as tip toeing around European sensibilities. Lashkar e Taiba, Jaish e Muhammad, Hizb ul Mujaheddin are names that even the least politically astute person in India knows, because of the extreme heinous nature of their crimes. It is an affront to our brave soldiers, our valiant policemen to our martyrs for such platforms to be given to such groups. It is an affront to the secular fabric of a history city like Kochi, that in the place where the Jews always felt at home and were never persecuted, just a few kilometers from their historic Synagogue an organization like Hezbollah is given an opportunity to explain how right they are in thinking that all Jews ought to be wiped out. Invoking the inevitable Godwin’s Law, I would not be surprised if they had put up flags of National Socialist German Workers’ Party. When you give legitimacy to mass murderers surely you must not leave out the biggest of them all!