Tag: Max Mueller Bhavan

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Watch: A miniseries over three days

Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, is showing the famous German miniseries ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ by RW Fassbinder, from today to Sunday.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Everybody loves watching a good miniseries. And if it’s a miniseries helmed by RW Fassbinder, about a man convicted for murder and his life after coming out of jail, it is definitely worth a dekko.

The Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, is showing the 14-part miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fassbinder’s famous adaptation of Alfred Dobin’s novel by the same name. The complete series is 15½ hours long and was first aired in Germany in 1980. In 1983, it was released theatrically in the United States, where a theatre would show two or three parts per night. It garnered a cult following in the US and was eventually released on VHS and broadcast on PBS.

Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai will present the re-mastered version of the series from today, September 12, to Sunday, September 14, in 14 parts. Three parts will be aired today, five tomorrow and the rest on Sunday. Entry and seating on all three days is free and on a first-come-first-seated basis.

Head to Galerie Max Mueller, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda. Timings for the screenings are: Friday, September 12, 6.30 pm onward; Saturday, September 13, 5 pm onward; and Sunday, September 14, 11 am onward.

(Picture courtesy www.theguardian.com)

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Attend: ‘Noise Life’, sound and video exhibition

The Desire Machine Collective will unveil their first solo exhibition in India this evening at the Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

This evening, the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai and Project 88 will host Desire Machine Collective’s (DMC) first solo exhibition in India. Noise Life is DMC’s new video and sound work, historicising the representation of Assam. In it, the artist duo engages French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s term ‘schizoanalysis’, which privileges empirical sensation and intensity over meaning.

More personal than other works by DMC, the piece points to excessive states of perception occurring in exceptional experiences of blindness or deafness. The work overwhelms the viewer with a chaos of sensations, and attempts to convey how we make complex sense of our lives and express our experiences.

While the videos will be displayed at Project 88, DMC continues their engagement with schizoanalysis at Galerie Max Mueller by using hundreds of photographic works of a single motion to create the illusion of movement. Additionally, Alt-rock band Digital Suicide will perform at Galerie Max Mueller at 6.15 pm during the opening.

Head to Galerie Max Mueller, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, Kalaghoda, at 6.00 pm, and 7.30 pm at Project 88, BMP building, NA Sawant Marg, Colaba.

(Picture courtesy DMC and Max Mueller Bhavan)

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‘Our reality is shaped by the medium we use’

A panel of media experts and photographers weighed in on the purportedly ‘dying’ art of photojournalism, at Max Mueller Bhavan.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Who says photojournalism is dying? Or to put it another way, who says photojournalism is still alive?

A talk at Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, titled ‘Wanted: Dialog on Photojournalism’ saw noted news photographer Sudharak Olwe, journalist and teacher Sanjay Ranade and Mid Day Executive Editor Sachin Kalbag give their views on the relevance of photojournalism in today’s times, and whether there was ever a chance of the art dying out completely in an era of smart gizmos.

Sanjay RanadeExpectedly, each of the speakers debunked the notion that photojournalism was dying out, though they did concede that the “message was certainly diluted” in certain cases. Said Ranade (in pic on left) , “Our reality is changed by the medium we use. Contemporary users are ‘pickled’ in user-generated content – they are negotiating their realities with the devices they own. Users are filtering the news they want, they are free to click a picture and instantly put it out there for everyone else to see, so why should they read newspapers?

“The statement being made often is that with everybody owning a smartphone, what is the need for photographers? But the difference is, these users are not professionals, so they cannot ‘design’ a picture, a moment, the way a professional can. A photojournalist performs an important function – he gives ‘context’ to a picture.”

Kalbag said, “We (the Mid Day newspaper) are a third or fourth choice newspaper in Mumbai. What do we do to get picked up, to get Sachin Kalbagnoticed? In Mumbai, and for a paper that caters exclusively to the city, we cannot not have a strong visual connect with our readers. There is no greater way than photojournalism to chronicle a great city.”

Olwe continued this train of thought thus: “In my work, I have seen that a bigger impact [is created] through a series of photographs on one subject, instead of just one picture. But this is not always true as well; it depends on the picture.” He went on to explain why he felt photojournalism could never die. “How can anyone say that photojournalism is dying? We have to create newer spaces [for more media]. Even with digital cameras, with the most advanced equipment, the photographer still has to follow the due ‘process’ of taking the right picture. You cannot have this process with an iPhone or a smartphone.”

Kalbag ended his talk by saying, “I honestly feel that reports of photojournalism dying or having died already are vastly exaggerated.”

(Featured image courtesy www.mid-day.com)

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A concert for Indo-European chamber music

Musicians Jarry Singla, Sanjeev Chimmalgi, Vinayak Netke and Hindol Deb come together for a concert today at Ravindra Natya Mandir.
by Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

This is a concert lovers of classical Indian and European music cannot miss. It features four excellent musicians, and a fusion of Indian and European melodies for an unforgettable evening of chamber music.

“Inspired by the encounter of Indian and European culture, the artists go beyond hitherto existing musical boundaries. Elaborately ornamented melodies of Indian vocal art reverberate with the piano´s melodic outlines, whilst the sitar and the double-bass create new forms of “stringed dialogues”. Indian and western improvisational concepts stimulate each other, and original compositions based on the tradition of European polyphony are enriched by the melodic qualities of the tabla. Harmonic progressions act as an inspiring challenge for the voice and the sitar. The cooperation of the five artists leads to a creation of fresh, subtle and exciting sounds, which I would like to call “Contemporary Indo-European Chamber Music”.

– Jarry Singla

In cooperation with the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, the Arts Foundation of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia initiated an ‘Artist-in-residence’ programme that promotes an exchange of artists. Currently, the Indo- German pianist and composer Jarry Singla is residing in Mumbai. In his original music, the Indo-German pianist and composer combines European musical traditions not only with a variety of jazz-styles, but also with classical and folk music drawn from non-European musical cultures.

Only shortly after his arrival in Mumbai, Jarry had the chance to start working with three of the finest Indian musicians based in the city: vocalist Sanjeev Chimmalgi, tabla-player/composer Vinayak Netke and sitar-virtuoso Hindol Deb.The four musicians will be joined by Jarry Singla’s longtime musical companion Christian Ramond, a highly acclaimed double-bass player from Cologne who is highly in demand all over Europe.

Apart from Mumbai, the quintet will perform in Pune and Chennai.

The concert is free and open to all. Head to Ravindra Natya Mandir, Prabhadevi, at 7 pm today.

(Picture courtesy Max Mueller Bhavan)

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Watch this film to read better

Film to be screened at Max Mueller Bhavan this evening discusses the challenges that the reading habit faces in Mumbai.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Early last year, Sayalee Karkare, alumna of the Erasmus Mundus Global Studies programme (EMGS) received a fellowship from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai to make a documentary film on books and reading culture in in the city. She collaborated with Matthew Sharp from the Mundus Urbano programme, who did the camera and sound work for the film.

The film, titled Books In The Big City, addresses the challenges that the culture of reading faces in a fast-changing city like Mumbai. As the city modernises and Mumbaikars shift their reading online, many small libraries and bookstores are closing down. What’s more, there are fears that mainstream magazines and news publications might also take their wares to the Internet.

But is this really about to happen? Street booksellers, famous in Mumbai for selling everything from pirated to first edition books, are also feeling the pressure. While technology has opened up new avenues for reading, not everybody can afford access to the Internet and e-readers. This raises important questions about access to knowledge in general, and the need for reader-friendly spaces in overcrowded urban areas in particular.

Books In The Big City explores these issues through the testimonies of prominent locally-based writers, readers and booksellers, taking the viewer on a journey around the city, from the cramped living quarters of a bohemian bibliophile to exclusive members-only ‘public’ libraries.

 

The documentary is part of the ‘Urban aspirations in global cities’ research laboratory, an international collaborative project in which researchers from TISS (Mumbai), the Max Planck Institute (Germany) and Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research (Mumbai) are working together. The project aims to compare post-colonial mega-cities in Asia, including Mumbai, Singapore and Shanghai, and to understand how the urban community of rapidly growing mega-cities impacts the development of urban aspirations.

Head to the Library, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda today, July 19. The film begins at 7 pm, seating starts at 6.30 pm. A Q&A follows the screening.

(Picture courtesy Sayalee Karkare, video courtesy EMGS) 

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Surabhi Saraf live in Mumbai

The San Francisco-based musician performed for the first time in India on Thursday, at Mumbai’s Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda.

Surabhi Saraf performed at Mumbai, and India, for the first time ever. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA degree holder played two tracks from her debut album, Illuminen EP, in which, in her own words, she “layers the sound of my voice over the droning percussions of aged fans that are augmented by lights and live video, creating an immersive soundscape.”

She played Illuminen, which she exhorted the audience to listen to with their eyes closed. This was an attempt by the artist to “draw the focus inward, negotiating ideas of entertainment, experience, sensation and sensationalism with the conviction that it is actually the numbing of certain sensory realities that generates crucial moments in socio-cultural transformation.” Watch the clip of the track below:

Her other performance, Spinning Four, was about “a visually rich immersive sonic experience that stimulates external senses. From my memories of Indian classical music to the multiplicity of sounds emerging from old mechanical fans, this performance deals with the phenomena on which we all depend, wind and breath. I layer the sound of my voice over the droning percussion of the rotating blades of aged fans powered by electric motors. Once on the air, these sound waves become electrical impulses and data that are manipulated through my laptop in real-time.”

(Picture courtesy surabhisaraf.net)

 

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