ENGAGE4Sundarbans
AQUAMUSE Panel:
Arts-based Pedagogies in Curating Fluidscapes
Regional Workshop & Exhibition | 2–6 September 2024
ENGAGE4Sundarbans brought together artists, educators, researchers, curators, and local communities to explore the Sundarbans through creative and interdisciplinary approaches. The regional workshop and exhibition used art, storytelling, and participatory practices to engage with the unique ecological, cultural, and social landscapes of the Sundarbans.
Sara Ahmed
Project AQUAMUSE: Overview and Challenges
In her session, Dr. Sara Ahmed introduces Project AQUAMUSE as an interdisciplinary and decolonial museum initiative that challenges conventional museum practices by blending arts-based methodologies with the documentation of events in three vital river basins—the Nile, Volta, and Ganga. The project is fundamentally driven by an exploration of water's profound influence on human experience and memory within fluid landscapes, with a focused lens on regions of pronounced vulnerability, such as the Indian Sundarbans.
This delta, marked by a complex and often tumultuous hydrosocial history, grapples with environmental threats, including recurrent flooding, cyclonic activities, and rising sea levels. Dr. Ahmed elucidates that AQUAMUSE addresses these existential challenges by examining how varied responses—from state infrastructure interventions to adaptive practices rooted in indigenous knowledge—illustrate different approaches to water as both a material force and a cultural symbol.
Dr. Ahmed additionally emphasises that AQUAMUSE is centred on a decolonised approach to water management that draws on local knowledge and recognizes the sacred connection indigenous and marginalised communities have with water. By treating water as a ‘living archive’, the project integrates tangible and intangible heritages, using digital technologies to expand beyond traditional museum boundaries.
Priyadarshi Patnaik
Role of Visual Arts in Conveying Flood Narratives
Through Dr. Priyadarshi Patnaik’s session, the GAP Model—Generation, Assimilation, and Proliferation—emerges as a transformative framework for fostering flood narratives through visual storytelling. This model initiates with the Generation phase, encouraging participants to reflect on classical and mythological flood narratives, from the Matsyavatara to Noah’s Ark, establishing a continuum between ancient deluge myths and contemporary climate crises. Through visual storytelling tools, he engages with the symbolic dimensions of floods, aiming to portray the environmental and human impact of these events. By revisiting these myths, Dr. Patnaik encourages the audience to reflect on how these ancient narratives are not just stories of survival but also repositories of knowledge that can be reinterpreted through visual arts to resonate with modern audiences facing similar ecological threats. The Assimilation phase focuses on interpreting these narratives through analytical methods, including visual discourse analysis and ethnography, ensuring that generated artworks are both aesthetically powerful and culturally significant. Finally, the Proliferation phase centres on digital curation, where participants create accessible, digital archives that extend the reach of these narratives to a global audience. Dr. Patnaik, thereby, calls for a co-creative process, highlighting that collaboration between artists, local communities, and scholars is essential in constructing flood narratives that resonate deeply with those who have lived through such crises.
Radhika Mulay
Congregating Ethnography and (Performative) Arts
Radhika Mulay’s presentation emphasises the performative power of visual and performing arts as a means of preserving social and cultural memories within flood-affected regions like the Ganges Basin and the Sundarbans. Mulay posits that, unlike language, performative arts offer a multisensory experience, allowing audiences to immerse themselves in the narratives of environmental vulnerability. By merging dance, gestures, and visual art, Mulay highlights how embodied performances convey the cyclical nature of floods, thereby subverting traditional binaries such as intellect versus emotion. In advocating for methodologies like oral and folk performance, Mulay highlights the value of local knowledge systems. Folk traditions in the Sundarbans offer insights into the community's historical relationship with environmental change. By integrating these traditions into performative practices, art becomes both an expressive and exploratory tool for understanding the region's cultural and environmental complexities. In this context, she explores the significance of codified gestures, such as mudras, within South Asian dance traditions, which articulate the complexities of flood experiences without reliance on verbal language. This performative expression transforms communal suffering and resilience into a shared cultural narrative, embedding local knowledge systems within performative traditions to capture the lived experiences of those in flood-prone areas.
Sukrit Sen
Rhythms and Rhymes in Advocating Climate Action
Sukrit Sen’s discussion foregrounds the role of music and the arts as poignant vehicles for addressing climate change. He highlights the power of music as a medium for cultural memory, examining the song Maloma as an example of how artistic expression can foster ecological awareness. Similarly, he reflects on historical protest songs like the iconic song Maa Rewa from movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, underscoring how these musical pieces not only raise awareness but also frame rivers as maternal, life-giving entities vulnerable to exploitation. Sen emphasised that artists, through their craft, become curators of knowledge, providing not only aesthetic pleasure but also a platform for advocacy and awareness about urgent global issues. In exploring flood-prone regions like Assam, Sen underscores how artistic portrayals of flood narratives provide a human dimension that complements scientific perspectives. The emotional resonance of these artistic expressions transforms abstract data into immediate and relatable narratives, urging deeper engagement with issues of environmental justice and resilience. In his conclusion, Sen stressed the importance of integrating cultural practices with scientific methodologies to tackle climate change. He thus advocates that artists and scientists, when working together, can offer a more holistic approach to understanding and addressing environmental issues.
Jenia Mukherjee
5Is of Ethno-graphic Research
In her session, Dr. Jenia Mukherjee introduced a methodological framework for ethnographic research centred on the 5Is—Interactive, Immersive, Innovative, Informative, and Inclusive—conceptualised to capture the complex dynamics of river systems like the Ganga. This approach is particularly useful for studying the hybrid and the hydrosocial spaces—places where water is intrinsically entangled with multiple social, cultural, and ecological processes. Dr. Mukherjee elucidates that by employing the 5Is, ethnography becomes a robust tool for engaging with the multiple dimensions of waterscapes as living, fluid entities. The framework allows researchers to document the ‘storylines’ that weave together human and non-human actors across the river Ganga’s various landscapes, revealing the river's hybrid nature as both a physical water body and a site of socio-political and cultural contestation. Through her 5Is theoretical skeleton, Dr. Mukherjee highlights the hybridity of rivers as spaces where human, non-human, and ecological forces intertwine. The Interactive element engages diverse stakeholders, from local communities to policymakers, while the Immersive aspect employs sensory methods such as transect walks and videography, fostering a holistic understanding of riverine life. Through innovative graphical depictions, Dr. Mukherjee advocates for an unconventional understanding of the waterscape, moving forward from the reductionist portrayals of rivers as static or unidimensional, rendering them as sites of ongoing transformation, marked by ontological plurality and socio-ecological interdependence The Informative component centres on the interwoven ecological relationships that define these socio-ecological spaces, while Inclusivity stresses the integration of scientific, social, and indigenous knowledge. The inclusivity fosters a dialogic space where multiple voices coalesce, offering a panoramic view of the river’s cultural and ecological significance.