ALL PROJECTS Charcha Sessions Thakurgaon, 1 - 7 Dec 2018 The Samdani Art Foundation was delighted to partner with Samdani Artist Led Initiatives forum member Gidree Bawlee on their inaugural Charcha Sessions festival in rural Balla, Thakurgan, Bangladesh from December 1-7, 2018 as part of our annual grant program. The four artists in residence for in this inaugural session were Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Khandakar Nasir Ahmed and Anisuzzaman, Rubel. Learn more about this program from the text below by Salma Jamal Moushum. The ‘Charcha Sessions’ came into being to facilitate continuing collaborations between visiting artists and the artists/artisans from the village to catalyze a long-term impact on both of their practices. As an organization Gidree Bawlee's aim is to create a balance of influence in the artistic processes of the visiting artists and the community art/craft practitioners. In the future, this project will be held several times of the year to support continuous projects that will be developed by the artists, and also to encourage new experimentation in regards to community engagement. We believe these frequent sessions will help both the visiting artists and the community art practitioners to find an equal ground in their collaborative practice. The sessions will bring interested artists in short-term (or long-term) residencies, or sometimes bring together only the community practitioners working with various materials to experiment and collaborate with each other. Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Shushila Rani and Somari Rani Yasmin Jahan Nupur has been researching the traditional practices of weaving in Bangladesh for several years. In this session she continued her research and practiced with her co-artists Shushila Rani and Somari Rani. Exploring the relationship of women's body to the waist loom while weaving, the artists experimented and attempted to push the boundaries of traditional jute weaving with backstrap looms. This is an ongoing project with learning and experimentation continuing past the residency. Kamruzzaman Shadhin and Prodip Roy Kamruzzaman Shadhin's interest in the traditional crafts of the region and their underlying history and relationship with communities has been a major part of his artistic research and journey. Shadhin and Prodip Roy have been working together for the last several years experimenting with various methods and techniques of bamboo craft. In this session, the artists worked together to transfer the brush strokes from an action painting by Shadhin into a bamboo canvas using traditional bamboo bending methods that Prodip specializes in. The bamboo platform was installed as part of the ceiling of a room of the residency. This is an on-going, process-driven collaborative experiment which will continue in the years to come. Nasir Ahammed, Shariful Islam and Shubesh Barman In his previous visit, Nasir Ahammed in collaboration with bamboo craftsmen from the community, experimented with bamboo twigs creating a large installation in collaboration with the bamboo craftsmen of the village. This time Nasir and his co-artists Shariful Islam and Shubesh Barman used dry branches and twigs and straw which were abundant due to the harvest season and created a dome-like structure which was installed in various spaces around the community. The experimentation will continue as the artists plan on more future explorations with bamboo twigs. Anisuzzaman Rubel, Chandra Kumar and community children Rubel, a recent graduate from the department of sculpture at Dhaka University, collaborated with Chandra Kumar, a clay artisan specialized in idol making. Combining both of their creativity and technique they experimented with clay, straw and bamboo which to create a shade providing sculpture beside a pond. The artists have plans to expand their experiment further in the next visits.

ALL PROJECTS A Time Comes When We Hear Nothing Amol K Patil and Ashfika Rahman Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) and FICA presented a collaborative online performance, "Voice to Voice, Screen to Screen" by Amol K Patil and Ashfika Rahman, launching their project, "A time comes when we hear nothing." The artists were awarded a grant for their project through the aegis of Stitching Screens, a platform instituted by FICA and SAF for supporting artistic collaboration across India, Bangladesh and the digital space in 2020 - 2021. Having worked on the project for over a year, Ashfika Rahman and Amol K Patil shared the final iteration of "A time comes when we hear nothing” on November 6, 2022. The project was imagined as a means of solidarity for global working-class people. An expression by two artists across borders reflecting on the collective experience of social divides during lockdown. The projected connected them through common concerns and emotions for people. Common deep pain ran through the veins of Bangladesh to India despite a geographic border. As part of our virtual launch event, we also screened an online performance by Ashfika Rahman and Amol K Patil titled, "Voice to Voice, Screen to Screen," realized in 2022 as an addition to "A time comes when we hear nothing." The performance is a cross-national conversation between two artists, a conversation symbolic of what might be shared between two laborers from Bangladesh and India. Questions of communication in two different languages. This conversation was inspired by the theatre script of Amol K Patil, referring to a long distance conversation between a migrant labourer and his wife. Here is a mundane conversation people of different nationalities and different genders transcending borders through screens evoking the monotony of a digital life. Getting into the deeper feeling of the working class. A conversation between two digital voices, two screens. The project ‘A time comes when we hear nothing’ is a means of solidarity for global working people. It showcases 1 min videos of artists’ performances across the globe, posted on an Instagram account called @a_time_comes_we_hear_nothing . The project explores the collective experience of social stratification, which was exacerbated by the pandemic. It also reflects on the plight of the migrant labor and the effects of the lockdown on those stranded at home. The videos represent occupying one minute as a means of solidarity. Visit their website to learn more about the project: A time comes when we hear nothing https://www.atimecomes.net/

ALL PROJECTS The Space Between - Rana Begum At The Parasol Unit Foundation For Contemporary Art 13th June - 18th September 2016| The Parasol Unit Foundation For Contemporary Art, London, UK Dhaka Art Summit 2014 Solo Project artist Rana Begum had her first solo show, supported by the Samdani Art Foundation at The Parasol Unit.

ALL PROJECTS Fragility and Resilience Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, 6 September - 7 December 2024 Ayesha Sultana's solo exhibition, Fragility and Resilience , curated by Sabih Ahmed, is on view at the Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai. The exhibition explores the delicate balance between the vulnerability and strength of our planet in the 21st century. Featuring a diverse array of artworks that includes the first-ever unveiling of Sultana’s hand-blown glass sculptures, the exhibition is designed to guide viewers through a journey of discovery and reflection. The Samdani Art Foundation has loaned several works from our collection for the exhibition, alongside contributions from prominent collectors including Prateek & Priyanka Raja, Akshay Chudasama, the Ishara Art Foundation, and the Prabhakar Collection.

ALL PROJECTS Akāliko and Jatiwangi Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Akāliko means ‘timelessness’ in Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, reflecting the group’s belief that musical forms have always been present in everyday life in society. The promotion of electronic and experimental music is at the heart of Akāliko’s activities and they collaborate with artists and professionals who make digital and sound art. Born out of Dhaka’s electronica scene, the group was originally established in 2012 as an independent music production label set up to address the need for a common platform to promote the work of ‘bedroom’ music producers. They collaborate with like-minded performance artists, writers, choreographers/dancers, communication specialists, psychologists, and, most recently, sound artists, while at the same time maintaining their label. Their compositions are streamed online and can be experienced in this listening station. Jatiwangi Art Factory in Indonesia, located in the rural district of Jatiwangi that includes 16 villages, has been developing new community-based practices that take as their point of departure the local material of clay, particularly drawing on histories of roof tile production. Activities have ranged from tasting, chemically testing and cooking local clay to developing a Ceramic Music Festival using clay-based instruments to reanimate ceramic production. The elemental matter of clay makes more complex our relationship to the earth and calls up widespread mythological stories of humans being shaped from this. A listening station within the exhibition connects visitors with the sounds this collective creates that emerge from the ground of Indonesia. Through a mini-residency catalysed through DAS, Akaliko and Jatiwangi have explored parallels between the clay-based visual cultures as well as sonic qualities of Indonesia and Bangladesh. Looking out the window into the garden outside, visitors can see collaborative instruments created in Bangladesh which will be activated through several jam sessions on the closing 3 days of DAS from 4–8pm. Jatiwangi’s travel to DAS 2020 was generously supported by the Indonesian Embassy of Bangladesh. Image by Noor Photoface

ALL PROJECTS The River Remembers at Islamic Arts Biennale 2023 Jeddah Kamruzzaman Shadhin was commissioned to show his new project The River Remembers (2023), for the Islamic Arts Biennale 2023, curated by DAS 2023 artist Sumayya Vally. Samdani Art Foundation has supported the transportation of the project.

ALL PROJECTS B/DESH Curated by Deepak Ananth B/DESH is shorthand for Bangladesh, of course, but also, bidesh , the Bangla word for abroad, a foreign land, an extraterritorial elsewhere. Desh, on the other hand, designates a homeland, accompanied by a sense or semblance of a national identity, however notional or real. So the home and the world are conjoined and separated by the most tenuous of lexical and phonetic expedients: the slender slash differentiating desh and bidesh that could also be seen as a marker of everything that lies between them. And ‘in between-ness’ is, if anything, a perenially shifting ground, a provisional state that might itself be an image of that potential undifferentiation of identity and alterity, ‘self’ and ‘other’ symptomatic of the globalised present. To have a sense of rootedness and yet not be insular, to acknowledge the feeling of homelessness (the spiritual malaise par excellence of the modern condition) and find new ways of negotiating it in the face of the neutralisation of difference that is the cultural logic of globalisation - these are some of the burdens faced by those once relegated to the margins and now deemed to be ‘emerging’ on the world scene. The tragically fraught history of Bangladesh’s coming into being as a nation, the chronicle of political turmoil and violence that has marked its relatively short existence as an independent state, cannot but be salient in the consciousness of the country’s intellectuals and artists and in their attempts to make sense of the vicissitudes of the present. To be a witness to their times is for many of them an ethical stance. For artists this imperative is doubled by another, namely, the need to find the form and medium most appropriate to their vision of the reality in which they find themselves. For many years now documentary photography has proved to be particularly compelling for a range of practitioners in Bangladesh, and the subjects they have tended to focus upon would seem to demand such an approach. But often their eyes have been schooled in allegorical or conceptual ways of seeing, and questions of ‘objectivity’ that underlie the documentary stance are subtly callibrated to the degree of empathy or distance they bring to their approach, as in Shumon Ahmed’s ongoing project within the ship graveyard on the Chittagong coast, reputedly the largest in the world. For Gazi Nafis, on the other hand, the camera has been the instrument to capture intimate moments in the lives of a range of sexual minorities, in images that betoken an engaging complicity with these social outcasts. In contrast, the anthropological nature of some of the subjects explored by the Australian Bengali artist Omar Adnan Chowdhury (the juxtaposition of a Hindu and a Shia festival in old Dhaka, for example) in his large scale audio-visual installations becomes the occasion for a slow, immersive and contemplative sensory experience. For some artists working in media that are not lens-based, the fix of the real is less than imperious. The peculiar assortment of creaturely forms that people the paintings of Ronnie Ahmed, for example, are the denizens of a parallel world that is gleefully awry and somewhat hallucinatory all at the same time. The oneirism of his work couldn’t be further removed from the cool detachment that Ayesha Sultana brings to her pictorial representations of familiar urban spaces, their blank allure a façade for something verging on the uncanny. Another aspect of her work dispenses with representation altogether, the more to explore the poetics of graphic inscription and the material qualities of surface and texture. This interest in investigating the rudiments of form is shared by Rana Begum, who was born in Bangladesh but grew up in Britain. Her interest in the pristine geometry of sharply angled coloured planes (in paper or aluminium) and the ways in which these might become receptacles of light inform her sculptural practice ; her rigorous and yet sensuous abstraction hints at the subtle coalescence of the Islamic architectural ideal of emptiness as a numinous space and the pared-down unitary forms of Minimalist sculpture. The formal ‘syncretism’ of Begum’s work could be contrasted with the exercises in cultural translation and critique undertaken by the conceptual artist and writer Naeem Mohaiemen, who divides his time between Dhaka and New York. Working with photography and film, he has sought to recover and critically reframe certain key emblematic moments and events (both private and public) in the tragic history that led to independence and the creation of a sovereign state. As a writer and as an artist, Mohaiemen’s work has dwelt perceptively on the political, ideological and cultural implications of B/DESH and the complexities of its current trajectories. Artists Naeem Mohaiemen Rana Begum Omar Adnan Chowdhury Ronni Ahmed Shumon Ahmed

ALL PROJECTS MOTHERTONGUE, Australian Center for Contemporary Art 22 April- 18 June 2023, Melbourne, Australia mOTHERTONGUE surveyed the past two decades of Mithu Sen’s compelling art practice, including a series of major new installations. The exhibition was presented as an illuminated mind map. As a constellation of image and word associations that move between visible surfaces and interior states, mOTHERTONGUE charts how language is channelled into forms as diverse as drawing, sculpture, media and performance to create complex artworks which elude definitional categories, institutional power structures and imposed identities related to race, gender, ethnicity and location. Her work 'Batil Kobitaboli (Poems Declined), 2014' from DAS 2014 was also in display. Rather than celebrate her success or importance as a South Asian artist, Mithu Sen used her invitation to DAS 2014 to create a project called Poems Declined that celebrates the work and efforts of poets whose work was not previously given prominence or attention, to those whose work was declined or rejected. In her experience in Dhaka, Sen realized that poetry was not limited to poets, the Bangla language itself was poetry, and poetry itself is a language in Bangladesh, sharing that “In Bangladesh, the language is not Bengali but Poetry.” This exhibition is presented in partnership with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) .

ALL PROJECTS দ্বৈধ (A Duality) Curated by Bishwajit Goswami with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman, in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation দ্বৈধ (A Duality) Curated by Bishwajit Goswami (Assistant Professor, Department of Drawing and Painting, University of Dhaka) with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the School of Design, College of DAAP, University of Cincinnati), in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation To think about Bangladesh is to think about the riverine, the deltaic landscape often evoking an idyllic imagining. To read about Bangladesh is to also read about floods and storms, and destruction designed by nature. To understand Bangladesh however, is to acknowledge the duality that flows through this land, its dwellers and natural environment interacting in unfettered fluidity in various forms. In welcoming the new year, we sing an ode to invite the stormy nor'westers (Kalboishakhi) to cleanse impurities and herald a fresh start. In embracing the destructive forces of nature, we accept the lessons it teaches us, the reality of the everyday struggles and the manifestation of the resilience of the Bengali spirit to hope for better days. The ambivalent relationship between man and the lived environment, people and nature, finds new modes of storytelling through these expressions. দ্বৈধ (Dyoidho) upholds that relationship by showcasing the fluidity found in the riverine nature of Bengal. The exhibition engages the human senses through color, form and its essence. Combining artistic research and practice, each section of the exhibition sheds light on a different aspect of duality in our everyday surroundings creating an immersive experience. Just as the waterways trace a path from the Himalayan springs to the estuaries of Padma, Meghna and Jamuna at the Bay of Bengal, the narrations traverse the artistic space following the way of the rivers. Sensory immersion is evoked both by the sound of paddy in the harvest festival, while the uneven gallery walls simulate the moist coarseness of the delta-soil. The chaos during coastal calamity resonates in the exhibition’s soundscape, as the seasonal qualities of Bangladesh’s climate: the humid summer, the refreshing monsoon, the dryness of winter all arouse affect, evoking emotion and memory. The dual manifestations of mother nature, nurturing and severe by turns, find new narrative forms where the beauty of the Sundarbans are juxtaposed against the insolent chimneys of bricks, coal and smoke; environmentalist movements are paired with creative performances eliciting thought-provoking contextual commentary on present-day reality. In the duality of light and darkness, the impure and gray forms of our destroyed environment are invoked, while hope shines at the edge of the horizon. দ্বৈধ (Dyoidho) evokes the idea of artifice, where things are not as they seem and artists, architects, designers, photographers and researchers come together in collaboration to set the stage for this discourse. As the urban character “Tokai” engages the environment in conversation and the dryprimitive aroma of hay connotes our agrarian roots—we extend an open invitation to participate in the discussion and to critique the apparent binaries of nature. Through texture, sound, smell, materiality, and color, the exhibition is activated in the creative imaginary and transformed by the experience of the audience. In the presentation of individual and collective experimental artworks, দ্বৈধ (Dyoidho) seeks to raise critical questions, reveal answers, and create dialogue between nature, the lived environment and our human connection to it. We welcome you to join the conversation. The exhibition is divided into six segments. Estuary Welcome to the untarnished estuary of land, air and water where our relationship with nature is fluid and ever-changing. As we immerse ourselves in the familiar and nostalgic sound of husking rice during the harvest season, Rafiqun Nabi's popular character “Tokai” cheekily questions the nature of our urban beliefs. The scent of newly harvested dry hay underlines our cultural nostalgia and our agricultural past. This sentiment is strengthened through the depictions of the seasons through Ahmed Shamsuddoha's Summer, Jamal Ahmed's Monsoon, Alakesh Ghosh's Autumn, Anisuzzaman Anis's Late Autumn, Sheikh Afzal Hossain's Winter, and Kanak Chanpa Chakma's Spring as they transform Hashem Khan's well-cherished memories of Bangladesh’s six seasons opening up a new avenue of discourse. Emerging artist Damasush Hacha's animation adds a new dimension to this conversation. Soma Surovi Jannat’s video artwork reflects the diversity stories found in the extensive water basin dialoguing in tandem with Abdul Gaffar Babu’s unique floating site specific installation. Fluidity Bengalis are easily drawn to the rippling rivers, developing an affection to the murky waters of riverine soil almost instantaneously. Both the abundance and scarcity of water define our daily livelihood, various feelings, or passions; this land of evening ‘Bhatiali’ songs is a serene aquatic canvas as it moves along with the rivers. As a response to the rivers’ temperament, Marina Tabassum's architectural model projects a silhouette of alternative hope that can overcome the shifting ebb and flow of the tide. Alak Roy’s sculptural piece presents the interrelation between the sacrificial and redemptive dynamic between water and land, while Tarun Ghosh’s artwork conveys an imagery of the intuitive exploration of everyday domestic qualities. Summing up this duality inherent in both the people and the wetlands, Dhali Al Mamoon portrays a new relation between a treasured memorable past and the strange aridity of the present. The Land Bengal's alluvial soil produces yearlong abundant harvests. Its nurturing quality is cherished by the artists who draw upon its wealth. Monirul Islam actively cultivates these tenets into his creative practice transforming commonplace daily objects into an expression of artistry that elevates and comments on the complexity of our relationship with our organic world. Through its nurturing quality, Bengali art pays tribute to femininity creating a magical connection with nature’s various manifestations. In her quest for her female self identity, Nazlee Laila Mansur combines surrealism with reality. Through the fluid and rhythmic brushstrokes in Farida Zaman’s Sufiya, we glimpse a dreamlike world evoked by Mother Nature. The power and resilience of the feminine is exemplified in Dilara Begum Jolly's installations and in Rokeya Sultana’s Madonna. Through Chandravati, Bengal's first female poet from Kishorgonj, Abdus Shakoor Shah pays tribute to the power of storytelling and “Parul”— the ever-familiar creation of master puppeteer Mustafa Monwar—joins this conversation in earnest. In understanding the tenderness of nature and the feelings of nurturing, Joydeb Roaza helps us visualise the tender roots of the sounds and feelings through his performance Tender Roots. Source Originating from the Himalayan Gangotri Glacier, the ancient Ganges exists to purify. The ever-familiar Padma, Meghna, and Jamuna rivers have changed the shape of this delta, saturating the earth with loam, alluvium and life. However, we, the ungrateful urbanites, repay that generosity by disposing our waste into the Buriganga. Mohammad Eunus’s Metaphor of a Wounded River paints that final heartbeat as nature gives in to relentless urban settlement. Through the mix of industrial and organic materials, Mahmuda Siddika’s leather collage comments on the extinction of the Buriganga. Mojahid Musa’s sculpture embodies the unusual and phantasmagorical form of the obscure darkness and fearful uncertainty of the future which is juxtaposed by Soma Surovi Jannat’s mural work where light heralds a new hope and a new resolution for the future. In the duality of light and darkness, people confront the contaminated and polluted reality of our present while holding hope for the future. Through their solo performances playing with colour, touch, and fragrance, Yasmin Jahan Nupur and Niloofar Chaman manifest the duality of both the lamentation and promise of our human condition. Indebtedness The Sundarbans, surrounded by loam, are a symbol of the deep trust in the preservation of the balance and diversity of our environment. Anisuzzaman Faroque’s installation represents the steadfast mangroves that defy the constant torrential tides, clinging to the southern border of our delta. They protect us decade after decade from the catastrophic side of nature unconditionally without any expectation or compensation. Shahid Kabir expresses this coexistence between the forests with the local inhabitants and Mostafizul Haque’s series Golpata depicts the evolution of this huge terrain. Hamiduzzaman Khan’s mural portrays a confluence of the duality of fresh and saltwater under the vast sky of the extensive Sundarbans. Meanwhile, Abul Barq Alvi provides us with a bird’s eye view of the brick kilns with fumes that engulf the surrounding landscape, and Nisar Hossain's painting Towards Annihilation reinforces the idiosyncratic emotions that man contains and performs against nature. Contradiction Bengalis remain optimistic even when faced with great adversity. The wrath of nature claims our homes and assets repeatedly along with priceless memories made over a lifetime. Recognising the silent desperate lament of the climate refugees, Abir Abdullah’s photo series documents their plight in an effort to discover the potent source of hope that propels them onward. The chaos brought on by the changeable and temperamental rivers permeate the lives of everyone and the nostalgic backdrop of Ahmed Rasel's visual storytelling holds up the constant fear of the devastation brought on by the ever-eroding river. This duality inherent in our natural habitat is reinforced both through the fictitious world found in Ashrafia Adib's virtual reality piece and Khairul Alam Shada’s cinematic portrayal of our natural surroundings. These contradictory perspectives are explored through Mohammed Emran Hossain's architectural installation of the periscope which refracts, reflects and reframes various angles symbolically empowering each of us to create a dramatic synthesis of our own perspectives of self-realisation, intuition, and worldview. Acknowledgements: We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the following individuals and organisations for their generous cooperation in helping make this project possible. Curatorial Team: Bishwajit Goswami (Curator and Researcher), Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Key Research Support), Shouro Dasgupta (Research Assistance), Kashfia Arif (Editor), Souradeep Dasgupta (Content Development), Zannatun Nahar Nijhum (Content Development), Humaira Hossain (Content Development), Anadiny Mogno (Content Development), Nusrat Mahmud (Project Manager), Atkia Sadia Rahman (Project Coordinator), Tirtha Saha (Project Support). Documentation : Anas Bin Iqbal (Editorial support), Arup Mandal (Video and Photography), Farid Ahmed Rafi (Photography) Logistics: Tanzid Parvez, Din Islam Hossain Sayem Gallery Logistics: Md. Shahadat Hossain, Nurun Nahar, Niloy Mankhin, Ruposhree Hajong, Mohammad Ashraful, Ekmot Ali, Sohel Chowdhury, Faruk Hossain Art Mediators and Volunteers: Anadiny Mogno, Anas Bin Iqbal, Apu Nandi, Arup Mandal, Farhana Rafiq Achol, Farid Ahmed Rafi, Fatin Fida Arko, Kamrun Nahar, Konika Mahian, Jisan Sajjad, Sarker Tukhor, Shaidul Alam Shifat, Tirtha Saha, Rizwan Bin Iqbal Social Media: Anas Bin Iqbal, Atkia Sadia Rahman, Nusrat Mahmud, Nusrat Jahan, Arup Mandal, Farid Ahmed Rafi Exhibition Production: Abdur Razzaq and Team (Gallery Preparation), Amal Sarker and Team (Structural Installation), Chanchal Kumar Shil (Printing), Md Humayun Kabir and Team (Metalwork), Helal Samrat (Production Volunteer), Bijoy Devnath & Munia Ahmed Mim (Architectural Scale Model Making) Special Thanks: Abdullah Al Mahmud Mahin, Bipul Mallick, Enayetullah Khan, Farhan Azim, Imran uz-zaman, Mohammad Kamrul, Mong Mong Sho, Nisar Hossain, Ramzan Ali Chowdhury, Rezwan Rahman, Saiqa Iqbal Meghna, Sharmilie Rahman, Sourav Chowdhury, Sony Kumar Sen, Syed Kushal, Tania Sultana Bristy. Zareen Mahmud.

ALL PROJECTS Below the Levels Where Differences Appear Curated by Vali Mahlouji The first iteration of an ongoing transnationally roving amphitheatre, as part of A Utopian Stage, artists, performers and filmmakers were inclusively incorporated within a collective arena of experimentation echoing the progressive pitch of the Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis (1967-77), and the highs and lows of universalist utopian ideals. Amidst resurgent forces of cultural and political reactionism around the world, below the levels… proclaimed a radical site of collective exchange. During the Dhaka Art Summit 2018, below the levels… drew upon the music, theatre, dance and politics that informed the utopian aspirations and contradictions of the original festival, with contributions by Hassan Khan, Goshka Macuga with Vali Mahlouji, Silas Riener (Merce Cunningham Trust), Reetu Sattar, Yasmin Jahan Nupur with Santal performers and Lalon Baul singers. GOSHKA MACUGA AND VALI MAHLOUJI | LIKE WATER ON HOT ROCKS (2018) An inaugural performative collaboration in which a procession of known characters from the Festival of Arts, Shiraz – Persepolis protested and occupied. HASSAN KHAN | PURITY (2013) What is it that is so comforting about the narrator’s voice? And is conflict always predicated on some sort of agreement? What does the hammer strike when it does? And why do I hate this word yet choose to speak of it? REETU SATTAR | HARANO SUR (LOST TUNE) Performance with 30 musicians and 30 harmoniumsHow do we encapsulate time via our shared past? This performance engaged visitors with the sound people grew up within South Asia, simultaneously recognising the receding path into so-called ‘modernity.’ This project was co-commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation and Liverpool Biennial, in association with Archaeology of the Final Decade and the New North and South. SILAS RIENER | FIELD DANCES (1963), BY MERCE CUNNINGHAM Silas Riener engaged with the local audience and leading them through Merce Cunningham’s Field Dances workshop, culminating in a site-specific performance. Inspired by children’s carefree, unstructured play, Field Dances was first performed in 1963 to music by John Cage with costumes designed by Robert Rauschenberg. YASMIN JAHAN NUPUR AND SANTAL PERFORMERS Collaborating with the Indigenous Santal people and Lalon Baul singers, Yasmin Jahan Nupur’s performative dance and video series broke down language barriers through a process of body movements and participatory dances, telling stories about life, spirituality, and culture, to create a bridge between city and local dialects, cultures and lost languages.

ALL PROJECTS AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! Documenta Fifteen, Kassel AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! at documenta fifteen by Elisa Cuccinelli AFIELD Study is a series of co-learning programs led by members of the network on different topics. Based on closed sessions and public workshops, it seeks to nurture synergies between like-minded practitioners, allowing for mutual exchange of skills and knowledge. AFIELD Study #3 was structured around the meeting between two groups: grassroots initiatives that experiment with alternative support structures, and individuals who critically reflected on their role as collectors, patrons or philanthropists. It is often difficult to think about the big picture and the long term when struggling to ideate in “survival mode”. Our convening hopes to contribute to current debates on resource sharing from a wide array of experiences that allow us to think together about the use of networks such as AFIELD to elaborate sustainable sharing infrastructure. This reunion was the first one where a number of AFIELD members met “in real life” to celebrate and think together after 3 years of meeting online. Samdani Art Foundation supported the travel of Bangladeshi initiatives to participate in this edition of AFIELD Study.

ALL PROJECTS 'Death Class' and Draftmen's Congress' by Pawel Althamer Faculty of Fine Arts, University Of Dhaka, 24 March 2015 Pawel Althamer is one of the top contemporary artists from Poland who works with sculpture and performance. He conducted Death Class inspired by Tadeusz Kantor’s "Death Class" (1975) and Draftsmen’s Congress with the collaboration of more than 100 students and teachers from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka. He continued his Draftsmen’s Congress in Sylhet with street children.