Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication organised UGC – Special Assistance Program (SAP) on Visual Culture on Friday. Dr. Sruthi Bala, gave talk on “THE GESTURES OF PARTICIPATORY ART, this is second in a row under UGC SAP. SAP was initiated by University Grants Commission (UGC) to facilitate the selected number of University Departments having some potential in research and teaching.
Dr. Sruti Bala is Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Amsterdam, where she coordinated the MA International Performance Research Programme for five years. She has been guest lecturer at the Universiteit Gent (Belgium), the The University of Hull at Scarborough (UK), the College of Music and Drama, Khartoum (Sudan), the University of Cape Town (South Africa), University of Hyderabad and University of Delhi (India). She studied German Literature at the University of Mumbai and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and completed her doctorate in Theatre Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Her research interests are in the fields of participatory art, pedagogy and performance, art and activism and feminism.
In her lecture, Dr. Sruti Bala talked about the concept of participation and the ways in which it circulates in contemporary theatre, performance and the visual arts. She said “Participation has become an influential concept in many spheres of public life, with a history that has witnessed its shift from being a critical ideal in grassroots democratic movements to signalling the nightmare of privatised self-regulation and pacification under neoliberal capitalism.” She addressed how can participation in theatre and performance be conceptualised, and how has it informed & influenced recent artistic practices.
The talk examined the gestures of participation in contemporary community arts, immersive Performance and performance art.
B Kartheek
Department of Communication