The Politics of Performance on the Urban Periphery in South India

This network will undertake three symposia and four field trips in order to investigate the politics of performance on the peripheries of growing South Indian cities, with four festivals as case studies.We will also pilot and share the use of performance interventions towards inclusive urban planning.
The growth of cities in India presents a crisis for many communities, sites and species that lie on the urban periphery and are endangered by rapid re-development and change. The performing arts are directly involved in this change. For instance, they enhance the cultural identity of the metropolis, yet may also communicate the heritage of marginalized communities and threatened sites. Traditional forms are also being developed and politicized in response to urban change, and here they share concerns with the aesthetics of contemporary performance art, which frequently engages in the politics of urban space. Animals and environmental issues are both represented and implicated in performance: for instance, the problematic care of performing elephants is exacerbated by congested urban environments, leading to growing calls for a ban. Understanding the significance of such performance is inseparable from an appreciation of the spectacle of the growing city, and the ways in which it is imagined, whether among the buyers of new property, or among those (human or non-human) who find their ways of life under threat.
In order to appreciate the various ways in which performance intervenes in, comments on, and is affected by a crisis of urban expansion, it is necessary to combine expertise from a range of disciplines, particularly in relation to the cultural landscape of South India. Our network will move across humanities, social and natural sciences, including performance, archaeology, animal cognition, and urban studies. Performance studies is a growing discipline in India, but not yet well established, and the UK network participants will bring this expertise and lens to the work, while the interdisciplinary knowledge of South India will be provided by scholars, curators, artists and planning experts based in Bengaluru. The PI brings research expertise in performance, architecture and walking, recently researching Indian live art and the city.
Our field trips, symposia and workshops will be held in February 2018 (Event 1), December 2018 (Event 2) and February 2019 (Event 3). The wider group will attend symposia at NIAS Bengaluru at each of the three events to discuss and share their related research alongside reports from the field trips.In February, the core group (the PI, CIs, Von Damm (MOD) and Daboo) will make field trips to observe the Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha, Chennai, which works with the fishing community and the Neralu (Tree) Festival, in Bengaluru. In December, the core group and Sreedhar Vijayakrishnan, an expert in urban elephants, will observe the 400-year old Vrishchikotsavam in Tripunithura, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
Our project partners at the MOD Institute for Urban Research in Bengaluru will draw on their past experience to lead a week of workshops/interventions in peripheral Bengaluru, using performance as a tool for stimulating dialogue, debate and expression of concerns in relation to urban expansion . Methods and results will be documented, and shared, discussed and developed at each of the network events in public presentations in Chennai, Kochi and Bengaluru. A closing public meeting will be held at NIAS in February 2019.
Other forms of dissemination include policy documents, academic publications and a website.
The network builds on the relationship between the Drama Department at Exeter University with NIAS in Bengaluru. This has so far been focused on co-supervision of research students, so this network allows researchers to focus previously informal discussions towards specific concerns and outputs, and will be a starting point for the development of more extended research collaborations.

One response to the challenges of the internationalization of India's art scene (corresponding with economic growth), has been to refocus attention on the regional, national or local. Performance, if sometimes overlooked, plays its part in the anxieties and responses to the 'Biennale effect' (D'Souza 2013, 2016). We examine the imbrication and re-engagement of performing arts with locality, not primarily as a response to the global art world, but to the expansion of the Indian city. The project seeks to have an impact in three overlapping areas:

1)By identifying the significance of all forms of performance for the development of urban space, through its articulation of alternative imaginations and practices of city peripheries, thus reframing attention on the importance of cultural provision beyond its association with cultural cachet, with implications for curators, artists and policy makers.
2)Demonstrating and increasing the use and understanding of cultural performance as a means to create more inclusive dialogues about the growth and sustainability of urban South India, and making performative forms of involvement directly accessible to communities concerned with urbanization, ultimately leading to more inclusive and sustainable cities.
3)Identifying the ways in which the material practices of performance are affected by the processes of rapid urbanization, and bringing urban studies insights to bear on performance practices, with implications for urban planners and policy makers, as well as artists.

Beneficiaries include:

-communities in peri-urban Bengaluru, whose views will be taken into consideration by planners through the use of performance to facilitate discussion between stakeholders concerning the planned urban expansion. In particular, issues of water, green space, housing, heritage and traffic congestion may be central themes to address, documenting responses.
-organizers and volunteers at the Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha, and at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, who will benefit from discussion and performances sharing techniques for using art to facilitate discussion of environmental and other issues of urbanization, drawing on experiences in Bengaluru, and offering tools and documentation towards implementation elsewhere.
-captive elephants in Kochi, who will benefit from policy recommendations for improved standards of management and welfare, and their mahouts, whose voices need to be heard in an increasingly urbanized world, in their efforts to find alternative livelihoods, while preserving some of their traditional skills, practices and values.
-planners who will be able to identify new routes to understanding the needs of communities and environments through the use of performance and other art methodologies for the facilitation of debate. Planners will also be able to benefit from new perspectives on the potential for arts practice to play an active role in peri-urban development
-curators and events organizers who will have access to a discussion of international practices and a considered report on the role of curators and artists in making a direct intervention in urban developments in South India. Rather than focusing on economic benefit and property values as previous research has done, this report will consider the contribution that art makes to opening up and diversifying perceptions of place and space, whether by placing new emphasis on marginalized places and people, or by playfully offering new ways of thinking through the future of such places
-artists who will be able to draw on a network and dialogue across a range of performance forms and contexts in South India. Our project links centuries-old traditional practices with new festivals and traditional forms with contemporary art, emphasizing common concerns.
-contemporary performance artists in India, whose time-based work will be given wider attention, and who will receive commissions for workshops and related artwork.