Development alternatives

What is the use of art?

In this interview, artist and professor Shaela Sharmin from the Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh, discusses the question, “What is the use of art?". (5’56”)

What can activists learn from artists?

Global Platform trainer Duniya Khandoker from Action Aid Bangladesh discusses how working with artists can expand how activists imagine their work. (3’38”)

Performance

This films shows a short performance from Bangladeshi artist Yuvraj Zahed Ali Chowdhury at Cheragi Art Show, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2019. The performance transgresses societal boundaries and disrupts standard framings without specific change in mind. (3’19”)

Performance

“Everyman is performing all the time, but maybe they don’t realise they are performing”

Joydep Roaja, curator of ‘live screaming’ at Cheragi Art Show 7, talks about the childhood memories that motivate for his work as a painter and as a performance artist. The film shows his interview alongside some of his art works. (1’38”)

Collaborative Scenario

‘Should I stay or should I go”.

Helena Okiring reflects on decision making in this improvised poem made as a collaborative scenario at the research workshop at Makerere University Gallery in Kampala, Uganda, 2018. (3’24”)

Collaborative Scenario

“Power to the people”.

Musician Buka Chimey’s poem intentionally makes use of a traditional form of call and response, at the arts based research workshop at Makerere University Gallery in Kampala, Uganda, 2018. (2’30”)

Cartography

“Walls do speak their stories, we just have to listen with our eyes and see what stories they tell us”.

Photographer Jim Nyakaana Joel reflects on the historical process and layers of map making and their influence on the structures of the present day.

Jim describes a simple process of walking and looking that allows him to immerse himself in different peoples geographies and stories of the past, and respond to the visual archives that surround us all. (5’49”)

Poetry and re-telling familiar stories

'Reaching Within Us To Beyond Us'

Poet and lecturer Susan Kiguli responds to the Creative Alternatives workshop held at the Makerere Art Gallery, Kampala, Uganda, 2018. The poem describes the use of the cultural archive to expand our political imagination. (6’30”)

Upside down worlds

“So a drunkard has to come and notice for you”.

In many artisitc forms the trickster character is used to generate non-confrontational conversations about power. Dr Susan Kiguli reflects on the way in which she uses subversive characters in her poetry. (4’41)

Reflecting from multiple perspectives

"We teach them to look from multiple perspectives".

Shaela Sharmin explains how fine art is taught at the Chittagong Fine Art Institute in Bangladesh. Here there is a long tradition of pushing students to seek out new audiences and broaden the meaning of their work.  “I ask them to see one work through lots of lenses, multiple perspectives…maybe someone who is not related to that work will find something else in it.” (4’05)

Refecting with audiences

“When you get many points of view, they are adding something…it makes wide my boundaries”.

In this interview at Cheragi Art Show in Chittagong Bangladesh, Razib Datta reflects on the value of audience for broadening his own perspective. (4’12”)

Reflecting with audiences

"We shouldn't underestimate the people; they ask questions like a sharp knife…People will ask questions to the artists and the artists will face those questions. These kinds of things should happen, we don’t want to get content.”

Shaela Sharmin, Lecturer at the Chittagong Fine Arts Institute reflects on the audience as insightful critics. (1’38”)

Collaborative exhibitions

The Cheragi Art Show was created by Jog Art Space to open a space for questions, mystery and dialogue between the public and artists. The space is curated through a collaborative process of team discussion, there is no interpretation of the works on site, and all artists are present to discuss the work with the public. The aim is to encourage people to engage more personally with the work and its meaning. (2’58”)

Collaborative exhibitions

"Cheragi is my Oxygen",

Cheragi is the site chosen for the Cheragi Art Show in Chittagong. The Cheragi printing district is in the centre of Chittagong and attracts people of all classes, backgrounds and ages. The area is unique because it is a place also frequented by well known characters, including politicians, artists and journalists, who go there to discuss ideas in an open environment. Duniya Khandoker spent two days at the show talking to people about their experience of the area and the art. She quotes a security guard she spoke with, “Cheragi is my oxygen” he says. (3’16”)

Collaborative exhibitions and team ethnography

“Life is a research".

Animator Raihan Ahmed Rafi talks about the character of the Cheragi street show and how it allows him to ask open questions through his work. After all, he says, “life is a research". (3’03”)

Team ethnography

"This is the beauty of research..you just be there….you try to understand people’s life, what that place is saying to you…that thing is automatically communicating with you. If you want to understand what that society really is”.

Duniya Khandoker reflects on the ethnographic method used in the project. (2’52”)

Collaborative residencies and exhibitions

In response to the project residencies and the National Museum of Uganda’s interest in bringing it’s archives to life, the team produced a collaborative temporary exhibition in the Museum devised to encourage questions around the museum archive and memory. (3’18”)

Collaboration

“When real time collaboration happens we fail to explain, before we have logic.”

Shohrab Jahan reflects on the unexpected results of collaboration, exchange and the value of failure. (3’06”)

Art as a creative response

“Maybe they reject us, maybe they laugh at us, maybe they don’t like it …that’s how we try to reach people and communicate some issues that they need to think about”.

Shaela Sharmin describes why artists often respond to societal taboos, and some of the ways society influences artists. (3’27”)

Art as a creative response

Sharad Das describes how he produces his work, focusing in this case on the relief effort for the Rohingya crisis that was unfolding at the time, and the work he produced for the 2020 Cheragi Art Show on dislocation, and the politics of objects. (3’15”)

Art as a creative response

“My art practise is also part of society”.

The film shows S M Reyad’s performance at Cheragi Art Show 7 with an interview where he describes the lack of connection between him and the audience, and their discomfort with not having answers. (2’35”)

Communication and advocacy

“We’re trying to make awareness through this installation”.

Many artists do make art with a clear message. At Cheragi Art Show 7 one installation, made by a group of architects from Dhaka, invited the audience to walk along a pathway of rubbish as their response to the waste problem in Dhaka. (2’11)

Acknowledgements:

These films were filmed and produced by Emilie Flower, with sound and on site production support from Ruth Kelly, Shohrab Jahan, Duniya Khandoker and Sheala Sharmin.