KCY Flyover Country

Imagine energized exchanges, eager discussions and collaborative art-making with creative practitioners across backgrounds and expertise, who have come together to re-engage with the process of public art and placemaking, connecting the global and the local using art & technology.

How can public art practices deeply rooted in place pivot online? How does the relationship between the local and global manifest in public art? What is the value of collaboration in the art-making process? How can technology enhance the experience of creative placemaking?

What is Flyover Country?

Jaaga’s interest in public art came with our genesis in 2009, with a special enthusiasm for flyovers in Bangalore in 2014. Having opened up this space for contemporary art-making under flyovers, we have been working in the field in a modest and carefully thought through capacity over the last 7 years, the project Flyover Country is thus a coming together of Jaaga’s keen interest and Eames’ whimsical rendition of flyovers in Kcymaerxthaere.

The project wishes to manifest a physical marker in Bengaluru that opens the portals to this parallel universe at Wheeler Road flyover location. The marker made of the light grey granite that is local to the city will be set amidst murals that amplify the rich details of the story, a layer of interactive technology and a piece of theatre that helps both art patrons and the neighbourhood around the flyover to partake in this process of art-making.

What is Kcymaerxthaere?

Kcymaerxthaere is a global work of three-dimensional storytelling where the Geographer-at-Large, Eames Demetrios has installed markers in one hundred and forty-three sites around the world that honours events in the fictional world called Kcymaerxthaere in our ‘linear’ world. Eames’ stories take us into a parallel universe that is radically different from ours, making us pause for a moment and stop, think, dream or wonder. With markers made to last that are often out of bronze, stone or concrete, and made with a process that embraces the locale it is situated within, these installations are portals where we can allow ourselves to plummet into the world of Kcymaerxthaere. Some of our favourite markers: The life of Bala Qhova in Linear Les Village, Bali, Indonesia Relearning Love, Suryagarh, in Linear Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India City of Justice, in Linear Vilnius, Lithuania

Visit Flyover Country on Gather!

Meet the Flyover Country Artists

The Story of Kcymaerxthaere

What you see vaulting above you is an exquisite testament to the still- present influence of the Tehachapi—the great road-building culture of Kcymaerxthaere. The Tehachapi did not build these precise flyovers, but they would surely recognize the overall structure as a perfect venue for their remarkable music, crafted to be performed by wheeled orchestras of human- powered vehicles—as well as myriad other instruments pulled by gravity and great beasts. Instead of plucking strings or playing a keyboard, Tehachapic wheels (and other devices) played the ridges and textures of the roads, carefully crafted and tuned by their gifted engineers and composers for maximum harmonic effect. The Tehachapi were driven from their native rezhn of Estrelliia after a decisive military defeat. However, many of their numbers escaped on rafts of asphalt—including the Second Band of Engineers whose rafts skipped across what we call the Indian Ocean. One of those rafts hit a rogue wave and ended up on the coast due east of here. The survivors never saw their compatriots again and so, determined to escape the watery shore, they eventually found their way here. One of their most famous performances involved Jlotkommen, the legendary Nayn Jingkat (a bit like a Sabertooth Tiger, but more deadly and literate), whose purring had the force of song and the edge of thunder. Jlotkommen, with her human friend Culev Larsze riding on her back, was drawn by the music that she had feared was extinct, and soon the great beast performed a kind of duet with the Tehachapic orchestra. From across a generation of generations, the beauty of that Kcymaerxthaere night still echoes today.

What are the components of Flyover Country?

BF CoLab

Participants who are visual artists, graphic designers, muralists, illustrators or animators, from Bengaluru will be convened in an online space.
Collaborative work, discussion and feedback sessions will be conducted online to develop the visuals from the text of the Flyover Country story
Mentor Mondays, Working Wednesdays and Feedback Fridays will structure the time during the three week of synchronous online collaboration.
Mentoring sessions by invited experts in the field to share their practice, contribute towards upskilling, and providing critical feedback to the art making process.
Mentoring will be offered in aspects of mural making, creating visual narratives, and exploring augmented reality for placemaking.
CoLab participants will interact with the theatre practitioners as part of the workshop

BF Dialog & Showcase
The month of july 2021 ended with the online showcase of our works as a result of this experience. This is open to wider audiences. Mentors who are leading artists in the field engaged in a public dialog session with the workshop participants and audiences at large to discuss and debate some of these critical questions posed.

A similar public showcase and discussion took place under the Dialog banner in tandem with the on-ground component of the program as well.

Murals in Progress

Artists

Mentors

Bakula Nayak

A self-confessed stubborn romantic, Bakula Nayak noses out the magic stifled daily and elevates the mundane into something bright, dreamy and unique through her art. Bakula’s passion for collecting vintage paper, fused with her love for imagining the life stories of people who owned them, translates into tangible works of art. She breathes new life into the now-forgotten pieces of beauty by painting on them.

Amitabh Kumar

In the past, he has worked with the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi, where he researched and made comics, programmed events, designed print media and co-curated an experimental art space. He is a founding member of the Pao Collective, an Indian comics ensemble, and is currently occupied with creating ecosystems for emerging comic book artists in India. Since 2012 he has been painting murals across the country.

Hasan S

Hasan is a new media artist, creative technologist and educator based in Bangalore working with critical concerns around technology, AI and tangible interfaces. His works blur the boundaries between Art, Science & Technology to collectively imagine a future in which symbiotic relationships are formed between humans and machines.