The Serendipity Arts Conclave

Convenor: Ranjit Hoskote

The Serendipity Conclave will invite its participating speakers to engage — each from their own research preoccupations and ongoing work — with a single question: What Should an Arts Institution of the Future in Goa Look Like?

Mapping Other Modernities

The inaugural session of the conclave will address itself to the alternative trajectories of the modern in South Asia, which are associated with histories, locations and languages that are often neglected or disregarded within a mainstream narrative.

Bridging Disciplines

This session will draw on the experience and expertise of other disciplines, in thinking through questions of research, institutionality, continuity, and the collective memory of a practice.

Building Institutions/ Cultural Infrastructure

This session will focus on various models of cultural institutions, ranging from established forms such as the museum to fluid forms such as the residency programme, as theatres for the production, dissemination and democratisation of culture.

Regional Histories of Pedagogy

South-Western India has acted as the cradle and crucible, since the second half of the 19th century, to a variety of schools of art, established in regional centres such as Kolhapur, Poona, Sholapur, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Mysore, and Panjim, among others. The emphases in these regional schools have varied among academic realism, the landscape, the portraiture of locality, and the nurturing of graphic skills. These schools have been eclipsed by more dominant accounts of the schools of Bombay, Baroda and Santiniketan.

The Armature of the Humanities

To make a significant contribution, an arts institution of the future must necessarily be housed within the larger conceptual armature of the humanities, treated as a set of visions premised on the development of the human capacities for imagination, social engagement, creativity and knowledge, rather than on simple instrumentalisation in the name of design or the ‘creative industries’. How might an arts institution nurture its participants through collaboration with other cultural practices; how might it serve as a laboratory for the cross-pollination of artistic impulses?

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