Request for Applications: Two Archival Fellowships | Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad (CLOSED)

India Foundation for the Arts
in collaboration with
Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad

invites applications for

Two Archival Fellowships
Application deadline: Wednesday, May 30, 2018.

This initiative is supported by TATA TRUSTS

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in collaboration with Saptak Archives, Ahmedabad invites applications for Two Archival Fellowships under the IFA Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative for a period of one year each.

The Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative of IFA began with the two–fold objective of providing practitioners with an opportunity to generate new, critical, and creative approaches to public engagement with collections in archives and museums; and to energise these spaces as platforms for dialogue and discourse. For more information visit www.indiaifa.org

About the IFA-Saptak Fellowships:
Two Fellowships will be awarded for affiliation with the Saptak Archives. The aim of the fellowships is to support arts practitioners - curators, performers, and scholars (students or professionals of Hindustani Music) - to work with the materials in the Saptak Archives in innovative, creative, and original ways.

Two Fellowships will be awarded for projects to:

1. Identify audio/video material at the Archives around a theme of their choice - such as a particular performer, a gharana / tradition or sub-tradition, a period in the history of music, a musicological concept or practice (these are just examples) - and use this material towards making a creative outcome like a performance, an exhibition, film, etc.

AND

2. Engage with recordings of gharana traditions (other than those that the applicants have learnt in their taleem with their respective gurus), and imbibe their aesthetic ideologies and approaches towards music-making into their own performative repertoire and style, and create a new performance work.

Besides the final outcome(s) mentioned above, other expected activities by the fellows would be to curate at least four public events such as talks and/or workshops around the material in the archive, during the fellowship period.

The recipients of both Fellowships will be required to spend a substantial period of time at the Saptak Archives.

About Saptak Archives:
Saptak Archives formally began in 2004; although in spirit, it has been in existence since the 1980s when the founders started putting together collections of Hindustani music in their personal capacities. The archive today has over 20,000 recordings of masters from various gharanas, traditions and styles within Hindustani music, both vocal as well as instrumental. This includes rare and valuable heritage recordings painstakingly pulled together from various sources, recordings of over 30 years of the Saptak Annual Festival of Music, along with other music from the small and large events that Saptak organises every year. The archive is now completely digital and all the recordings, together with rich metadata have been stored in a professionally designed database system for easy access, including detailed field-based search and retrieval facilities.

For more information on the background and history of the Archives, click here

For more information about the archive, please contact saptak1980@gmail.com

Applicant profile:
We seek applications from curators, practitioners or scholars with previous curatorial and/or performative experience in the field of Hindustani Vocal or Instrumental Music and a strong interest in exploring and imbibing new musical ideas and perspectives from heritage archival material.

Practitioners who are Indian nationals or have been residing in India for five or more years are eligible to apply. To know more about our eligibility criteria please click here

Financial assistance and other support:
Each fellowship provides an honorarium of Rs 2,00,000/- for the duration of one year along with access to research facilities within Saptak Archives. In addition, a work space will be provided by the Archives during this period, along with the opportunity to interact with the curators of the Archives and students and faculty of the Saptak School of Music.

A separate budget will be provided for the final outcome.

Important dates:

  • The deadline for receiving applications is Friday, May 30, 2018.
  • Shortlisted candidates will be informed by June  10, 2018
  • Interviews with shortlisted candidates are expected to take place in the third week of June 2018
  • The Fellowship will commence from July 9, 2018 for a period of one year

Application Process:
Your application must include:

  • A brief description of a performance/exhibition you can develop from the collection at the Archives. The description should include your vision, approach, and possible outcomes of the programmes. The intention is to give us an idea on how you would like to approach this project.
  • A brief note on the public activities you could potentially develop from the collection at the Archive.
  • A letter of interest explaining how you would benefit from this Archival Fellowship. Please identify aspects of your practice and research that you think will be honed and developed during the course of the Fellowship.
  • A brief description of a project you have been involved with either as a curator, arts practitioner, or, researcher. This description should include the vision, approach, processes, and outcomes that have resulted from that project. This will need to be accompanied by the documentation of the project, which could include six to eight scanned or printed images with titles and date, DVD (maximum duration of four minutes), catalogues, artworks, performances, or reviews.
  • Your curriculum vitae.

Please address the soft copy of your application or any queries to Suman Gopinath at suman@indiaifa.org

Please also post the required documents in an envelope marked 'IFA-Saptak Archival Fellowship' by Wednesday, May 30, 2018.

'IFA-Saptak Archival Fellowship'
India Foundation for the Arts
'Apurva', Ground Floor,
No 259, 4th Cross,
Raj Mahal Vilas, 2nd Stage, 2nd Block
Bangalore - 560 094