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MAP collaborates with Vitra Museum

MAP collaborates with Vitra Museum

The Vitra museum’s collection, focusing on furniture and interior design, is centered on the bequest of U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames, as well as numerous works of designers such as George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Jean Prouvé, Richard Hutten and Michael Thonet. It is one of the world’s largest collections of modern furniture design, including pieces representative of all major periods and styles from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards.Jochen Eisenbrand and Divya Thakur discuss two iconic chair types — a Rietveld Red Blue chair from Vitra’s collection and a Pida chair from MAP’s collection. Though culturally distinct, both chairs nevertheless share commonalities in construction and design.

Duration : 11m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Partition Museum

MAP collaborates with the Partition Museum

Vaishnavi Kambadur and Priyanka Seshadri examine a brocade skirt and a phulkari coat, uncovering stories of loss, unification and freedom struggle contained within them. The Partition Museum is a public museum located in the town hall of Amritsar, Punjab, India. The museum aims to become the central repository of stories, materials, and documents related to the post-partition riots that followed the division of British India into two independent dominions: India and Pakistan.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum

MAP collaborates with the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum

Everything at the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum is related to ancient traditions and rituals including Indian art, and literature. In this episode, we look at three pairs of portraits of three nineteenth-century rulers from Rajasthan. Watch as Mrinalini Venkateswaran explores the similarities and differences between these images, photographic technology, and the socio-political spaces that these rulers inhabited.

Duration : 6m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Mehrangarh Museum

MAP collaborates with the Mehrangarh Museum

Mehrangarh Museum Trust is India’s leading cultural institution and center of excellence, established in 1972 by the 36th Custodian of Marwar- Jodhpur, H. H. Maharaja Gaj Singhji to make the fort come alive for visitors. Today Mehrangarh Museum has a unique importance as a repository of the artistic and cultural history of the large area of the central Rajasthan, Marwar-Jodhpur, ruled by the Rathore dynasty. Krishna Shekhawat and Riya Kumar discuss a fire striker from MAP’s collection and a hilt from Mehrangarh’s collection with strikingly similar animal imagery.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Crafts Council

MAP collaborates with the Crafts Council

The Crafts Council Collection was initiated in 1972 to document trends and innovation in the materials, processes, skills and technologies of contemporary craft and is now the UK’s foremost collection of contemporary craft, embracing all disciplines and featuring the most important makers of the last 40 years. In this episode, Shubhasree Purkayastha and Annabelle Campbell look at the works of Jivya Soma Mashe and Tadek Beutlich exploring their trajectories as artists, engagement with natural materials, and themes of community.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Peabody Essex Museum

MAP collaborates with the Peabody Essex Museum

The roots of the Peabody Essex Museum date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes who had sailed beyond either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The society’s charter included a provision for the establishment of a “cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities,” which is what we today would call a museum. Society members brought to Salem a diverse collection of objects from the northwest coast of America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, India and elsewhere. By 1825, the society moved into its own building, East India Marine Hall. In collaboration with the Peabody Essex Museum, this episode looks at a photograph by Jyoti Bhatt from MAP’s collection and a painting by Ram Kumar from the Peabody Essex Museum, their juxtaposition bringing forth an exploration of modernity and post-colonial identity in urban and rural India.

Duration : 7m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum

MAP collaborates with the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum

Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum is a museum of Indian sculptures, bronzes, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, miniature paintings, woodwork, bead work and ancient and contemporary coins in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. In this episode, Sujata Parsai and Riya Kumar look at a Jain pata and a work by Syed Haider Raza exploring their symbolic meaning and concepts of sacred geometry across time and space.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Detroit Institute of Arts

MAP collaborates with the Detroit Institute of Arts

The Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection located in Michigan, USA is regarded as among the top six museums in the United States with an encyclopedic collection that spans the globe from ancient Egyptian and European works to contemporary art.Katherine Kasdorf, Associate Curator at the DIA, traces the journey and history of two powerful South Indian goddesses: a brahmani in MAP’s collection and a yogini currently housed at the DIA.

Duration : 10m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Rhode Island School of Design

MAP collaborates with the Rhode Island School of Design

The Rhode Island School of Design is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the accessibility of design education to women. . Jan Howard and Shilpa Vijayakrishnan trace the trajectories, painting styles and subjects of two pioneering artists: Kenojuak Ashevak and Jangarh Singh Shyam.

Duration : 10m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Museum of Fine Arts Boston

MAP collaborates with the Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Laura Weinstein and Shubhasree Purkayastha trace the journey and making of two popular prints from the nineteenth century—a Battala woodcut print from MAP’s collection and a chromolithograph from the Oriental Art Studio housed at the MFA, Boston. Despite variances in style and technique, both prints feature the iconography of Krishna and Radha—the divine lovers that have captured the imagination of artists and writers for centuries.

Duration : 7m
Maturity Level : all

MAP collaborates with the Victoria & Albert Museum

MAP collaborates with the Victoria & Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is the world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Susan Stronge and Kamini Sawhney look at the popular Tipu’s Tiger and a textile souvenir from MAP’s collection, unearthing the symbolism and hidden meaning behind both objects and shedding light on the convergence and conflict between two cultures.

Duration : 9m
Maturity Level : all

Ayman Baalbaki talks about Janus Gate

Ayman Baalbaki talks about Janus Gate

Ayman Baalbaki’s monumental installation titled Janus Gate for the Lebanese Pavilion at the 59th Venice Bienniale until 27th November 2022: “My starting point was Beirut, which I see as a city rich in what Michel Foucault refers to as ‘other spaces.’ Along the model of the word ‘Lebanonization,’ meant to describe the fragmentation of a state, ‘Beirutization’ defines places troubled by barricades and borders – in other words, to speak of the urban dismemberment of a city and its fragmentation into discrete islands.” Video courtesy of DAF Beirut - Platinum sponsor of the Lebanese Pavilion

Duration : 19m
Maturity Level : all

Grow by Daan Roosegaarde

Grow by Daan Roosegaarde

How can cutting-edge light design help plants grow more sustainably? How can we make the farmer the hero? Daan Roosegaarde’s artwork GROW is an homage to the beauty of agriculture and is inspired by scientific light recipes which improve plants’ growth and resilience. GROW consists of a design-based light recipe that shines vertically across 20,000m2 of farmland with leek (Allium porrum). You experience the artwork as ‘dancing lights’ across a huge agricultural field. The light is poetic, and inspired by photobiology light science technologies which have shown that certain recipes of blue, red, and ultraviolet light can enhance plant growth and reduce the use of pesticides by up to 50 percent.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Land of the Jaguar

Land of the Jaguar

A short movie by Oto Hudec portrays a simple performative painting in hills above the Jaguar-Land Rover factory in Nitra, Slovakia. Slovakia is the biggest producer of cars per capita. However, although creating jobs, the negative side of the car industry is its high emissions, taking into account produced vehicles, especially SUVs. The Jaguar Land Rover factory in NItra is built on fertile soil close to a pittoresque forest of Zobor mountain. In a video, a painter is covering the image of the factory with layers of paint, until there are no traces of civilization- the urbanisation is turned back to forests and grassland- as this landscape might look thousands of years ago.

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #1: Caracoles

Children’s Game #1: Caracoles

Mexico City, Mexico, 1999; 4:43 min In collaboration with Julien Devaux High above the city that shimmers like a distant sea, a boy kicks a plastic bottle half full of liquid up a steep shanty road of light and dark. A norteño song plays somewhere. A truck passes. The challenge is to get to the top of the hill by kicking the bottle steadily upwards, intercepting it as it rolls back, kicking it again, playing with and against gravity. The bottle drifts and dodges, zigs and zags, is briefly kidnapped by a dog. At the end, the Sisyphean stakes of the game become clear as the bottle gets away and with a groan the boy runs downhill after it. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #3: Coins

Children’s Game #3: Coins

Mexico City, Mexico, 2008; 2:39 min In collaboration with Julien Devaux We see three kids from behind, standing at a set distance from a peeling, whitewashed wall. The rule is that each player throws a coin against the wall, that drops and rolls back on the pavement; the player whose coin remains the closest to the wall can keep the other players’ coins. As we watch, though, the coins tinkle everywhere, several flung by each player, further multiplied by their shadows, after which all three rush forward to scoop up loot, seemingly at random and yet without disagreements. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #5: Revolver

Children’s Game #5: Revolver

Baja California, Mexico, 2009; 2:49 min In collaboration with Julien Devaux The props in this game are wooden sticks or branches shaped like guns. Two kids pretend to fire at each other, making elaborate and highly varied shooting noises. A further dramatic element is the creative use of whatever lends itself in the vicinity –dustbins, trees, walls, abandoned cars– to improvise scenes inspired by war films and westerns, car chases and shootouts between gangs. The camerawork is rapid, swirling, and full of jump cuts. A little girl sometimes raises her arms, in exasperation or surrender? Near the end, some half-hearted dying noises. Though the roles of victim and killer are pre-assigned, neither boy actually bites the dust. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #6: Sandcastles

Children’s Game #6: Sandcastles

Knokke-Le-Zoute, Belgium, 2009; 6:04 min In collaboration with Julien Devaux, Cristian Manzutto, and Félix Blume The castle must be positioned just far enough from the sea to be completed before the tide reaches it. As the moat is dug by busy spades, the vacated sand forms a growing pile in the middle. Sea water starts to rise into the moat from below. As the waves break gently, closer and closer, the children dig faster to fortify the outer rampart with sodden sand. Even as the defenses are being flooded, they work on shaping and firming the castle with their hands and feet. The tide soon overwhelms the mini world and smooths the whole thing flat, leaving the children standing ankle-deep in ebb and flow. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 6m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #7: Stick and Wheels

Children’s Game #7: Stick and Wheels

Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 2010; 5:22 min In collaboration with Natalia Almada On a wide, gravelly mountain road, earth-coloured dwellings in the background, small boys scamper behind tyres of different thickness and circumference, beating them onwards with a stick. A donkey brays in sympathy. The thin, flexible tyres of bicycles are the hardest to keep upright, especially when performing turns (slowing and tilting the rubber hoop without loss of momentum) before racing back, sometimes in competition with another, cheered on by their companions, towards the starting line. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #14: Piedra, papel o tijera

Children’s Game #14: Piedra, papel o tijera

Mexico City, Mexico, 2013; 2:51 min In collaboration with Julien Devaux and Félix Blume This ancient Chinese game is played between two people, who in unison say ‘rock, paper, scissors’ before ‘throwing’ one of the three figures at each other: closed fist or flat hand or two fingers in a V shape. Rock blunts scissors, scissors cut paper, paper enfolds rock. Each round is win, lose, or –if both players choose the same ‘tool’– draw. We see not hands but a shadow-play of hands against a pale background, as the two antagonists display the tremendous skill that kids alone can muster in what seems impossibly fast motion. ‘Conceptual art,’ you say, the kind you could watch for hours, the hands as synecdoche not of the body but of two bodies in a rhythmic frenzy of elegant interaction and dissolution. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #11: Wolf and Lamb

Children’s Game #11: Wolf and Lamb

Yamgun, Afghanistan, 2011; 3:01 min In collaboration with Elena Pardo A group of children hold hands in a circle. The child in the middle plays the lamb, the one outside is the wolf. The wolf tries to catch the lamb by breaking through the human fence, but the kids crouch quickly down, blocking him with lowered arms. If the wolf does breach the circle, the lamb can duck out of it, while the kids now try to keep the wolf imprisoned inside. At times the cheeky lamb provokes the wolf, rushing out of safety almost into his path and darting back in. The lamb may be caught, ending that round of the game, inside or outside the fold; but these kids prefer close shaves, the dramatic prolongation of suspense. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #9: Saltamontes

Children’s Game #9: Saltamontes

Salto Acha, Venezuela, 2011; 6:10 min In collaboration with Benjamin Mast, Julien Devaux, and Félix Blume Girls and boys, together for once, hunt through lush grass and undergrowth, on the lookout for well-camouflaged grasshoppers. When one is found its hind legs are pulled off, though not its wings. Each child hurls his or her grasshopper up into the air, where it flutters against the sky above the upturned faces of the skipping, wheeling children. Unable to fly far, it will soon free-fall and be captured again. The winner is the player whose grasshopper stays the longest in the air. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 6m
Maturity Level : all

Children’s Game #10: Papalote

Children’s Game #10: Papalote

Balkh, Afghanistan, 2011; 4:13 min In collaboration with Elena Pardo and Félix Blume A 10-year-old boy in a pink salwar kameez stands near a dune-colored wall under a powder-blue sky. He frowns and gesticulates, conversing in stops and starts with the heavens or at least with the gusting wind because you don’t see his kite at first, and the string is so fine you can’t see that either. What you see is a body interacting with unknown forces, pulling to the left, the right, up, down, quickly, over to the left again, and so on. Here is not only the body of the boy but the body of the world in deft mutual mimesis, amounting to ‘the mastery of non-mastery’ which is the greatest game of all: a guide, a goal, a strategy –all in one– for dealing with man’s domination of nature (including human nature). Afghan kite fighters often attach small blades to their kite strings or coat them with ground glass and glue, the better to down their opponents. Under the Taliban, kite-flying was banned. Lorna Scott Fox More info: [Francis Alÿs,https://francisalys.com/]

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

INTERACTIONS

INTERACTIONS

When Cinema Looks to Nature. ART for The World continues its commitment to the global effort to increase awareness of the effects of Climate Change and the Environment by producing twelve International Filmmakers who create connections between Humans and Animals through Biodiversity, Climate Change, Environment, and Water Risks. Stay tuned;-)

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all