Art & Environment Residency Aug-Sept 2004

Working with the Community

Gigi Scaria worked on a film with Sohail and Mariyan, two waste pickers whom he met at a school in NDMC Community centre in Sarojini Nagar. ‘A Day with Sohail and Mariyan’, made in a fictional documentary mode takes a moving steady glance at a process of disposing, collecting and sorting. A selection of signs, metaphors accumulate through the film, telling a subjective story.

Monty Senarath Collombage, a ceramic artist analyzed waste with,’Beautiful Dustbin’. The installation engaged both with the act of making the ceramic functional object and the implication of the industrial/manufactured heap generated by discarded bottles/containers etc. He networked with the local community of traditional potters in the outskirts of Khirkee to purchase clay, to hire a kiln and engage the services of a local potter, who also works at the archeological survey of India as a clerk.

Steve Duval’s experience of being in Delhi comprised of unbearable temperatures, pollution and the near harrowing experience of being over charged by the autorickshaw driver. ‘CNG Cowboys’, was realized in such a circumstance. He took a keen interest in the functioning of CHINTAN as a organsiation, and its functioning at a micro level. He interviewed Bharati on her views on issues of waste, recycling, and the role of the government.

Valsan Koorma Kolleri worked with traditional workers who do boring in the ground to search for water. ‘Drainage’, an environmental sculptural installation realized the symbolical implication of loss/recovery in cleaning/clearing, using/re-using the environment.

‘Growing by Sharing’ by Åsa Sonjasdotter described her interest in wanting to work with a range of organisations namely Navdanya Biodiversity and Conservation Farm, Dehradun. As part of her research, she traveled to Garwal in the beginning of the residency, first to RFSTE, Dehradun then later during the residency she visited and studied the organic farming practiced by the locals in Hyune and Devshal village in Garhwal.