‘As We Run Through Time’ , a collaborative photography design-a-thon on the perception of Goa facilitated by Idhar Udhar will be held on June 7 and 8, culminating in an exhibition at Museum of Goa
KALYANI JHA | NT BUZZ
With the aim of making visual art more fun and productive, Chaitali Paranjape who hails from Margao and Preksha Kothari from Rajasthan founded Idhar Udhar, a remote and slow functioning collective, in 2023 at the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar.
Since then, the platform has striven to bring unpublished artists into the limelight and creates a variety of offline social experiences with a focus on engaging with art.
Their latest initiative ‘As we run through time’, is a collaborative Photography Design-a-thon centred around the perception about Goa.
The workshop is aimed towards people who are curious about lens-based mediums and working with it as well as people who are interested in creating. As part of it, eight participants with intermediate level experience in photography, filmmaking or graphic design will be spending 12 hours on each of the two days at Candolim Beach, Aguada Fort, and places in vicinity of them.
“It’s an intensive workshop, similar to a hackathon, featuring fast-paced learning across different phases: ideation, collaboration, creation (photos, videos, book making), curation, and exhibition. The workshop includes four sets of activities —Representing the Cliché, Fiction in Focus, Constructed Images, and Contrast and Context—each designed to keep participants on their toes,” they say.
In the process, the participants will gain hands-on experience in collaborative photography while deepening their understanding of perception and collective thinking.
Indeed, the facilitators stress on the importance of collaboration between artists for growth. “After studying design and photography we realised that in today’s economy, it is difficult for artists to work in silos and grow. In collective thinking one is always motivated and challenged by each other’s creativity, looking at it with a positive lens. Of course, the healthy environment between collectives should be maintained to improve the quality of thoughts and ideas. The workshop aims to do that, by bringing together individuals who translate their ideas in different mediums or have different ways of looking at things,” they say.
The final exhibition will consist of zines, short films and prints created by the participants reflecting on their shared experiences and insights that will be on display on June 10 at Museum of Goa, Pilerne.
Some of the major takeaways from this workshop, say the facilitators, include learning about collaborative working, articulating ideas, understanding the importance of the design process in one’s practice and how the value of doing things is more important than thinking.
“We see this as an opportunity for participants to grow artistically and intellectually, which can influence their future projects, collaborations, or practices in organic and meaningful ways,” they say.
