01 November,2021 07:14 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Pic/Nimesh Dave
A hawker sells colours used for creating rangoli during Diwali, at Borivali.
Two aligned events today will explore the concept of digital paranoia, which involves networked algorithms, platformed surveillance and the like creating inherent anxiety in people in the 21st century. The first of these is a workshop titled Everything is Fine, where people will learn about how digital paranoia is a collective rather than individual experience. The second is an interactive book reading of Dr Nishant Shah's title, Really Fake, where participants will be asked to choose any four from nine images and headlines, only to find out that three of them are true and one is a lie. "The idea is to think about what it is that scares us about the digital space, questioning how we can look at this as a technological condition instead of something that emerges from within us. We are trying to raise an intellectual conversation about online concerns," shared Rashmi Dhanwani, founder of The Art X Company, which is organising the events along with Goethe-Institut Mumbai.
Apart from being the former chairman emeritus of the apparel company Raymond Group, Vijaypat Singhania was also a keen aviator, professor and even the Sheriff of Mumbai. His fascinating life is now the subject of an autobiography called An Incomplete Life (Pan Macmillan India), where he talks about his anguished childhood, the eventful years he spent at Raymond, and the tumultuous period after he was embroiled in a legal battle with his son. Pick up the title to learn more about this legendary Indian businessman.
The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) is hosting Film Bazaar Online between November 20 and 25, and it has now announced the list of 20 projects for its Co-Production Market, one of the key programmes at the event. These films originate from 11 countries and are in different languages including English, German, Kannada and Bengali. They include Sri Lankan director Dulanka Devendra's Mathaka Washtra, Aman Mahajan's Mirpur Express that is in Hindi, and Debarati Gupta's Bengali film Hashnouhana. "This is one of the biggest co-production labs that takes place in South Asia, and is similar to events held at great international film festivals across the world, including at Cannes, Busan and Rotterdam," Gupta (in pic) told this diarist, adding that her film is a love story about a couple in rural Bengal.
There was a time till around 2010 when rock music reigned supreme in the spectrum of independent Indian music, with multiple festivals including Great Indian Rock and Independence Rock being held annually to celebrate the genre. That was before electronic music and, more recently, hip-hop became the prevalent sounds of the day. Now, a new music property called Rock Raid Fest hopes to put the spotlight back on rock music. It's a two-day festival that will be held in December at Glocal Junction in Worli. "We have eight confirmed bands at present, including Unchained and Night Train. Four of them will perform on each day, and the idea behind the festival is to bring rock musicians together with their audiences since there have been no rock festivals happening in the city lately," shared Makarand Sathe (in pic) of Temple of Rock, the group that is organising the festival.
The Science Gallery in Bengaluru has started a series of mediator-led sessions for their award-winning exhibition called Contagion. Jahnavi Phalke, its director, shared that these mediators are between the ages of 18 and 28 years, and their job isn't to guide audience members or to explain the exhibition to them. It is to start a conversation around the exhibits on Zoom to enable people to build a relationship with them.
"We train them with the artists and scholars about a couple of months in advance so that they understand the creative process, and these sessions will carry on till December," Phalke shared, adding that there are about three exhibits shown in an hour at each session. To know more, visit bengaluru.sciencegallery.com.
