Janara Jaaga- People’s Place
“…cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties,” she wrote. They get their order from below; they are learning machines, pattern recognizers.” ― Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Janara Jaaga a collaborative effort with BeFantastic and Kcymaerxthaere, is breathing life into this space, inviting artists from diverse backgrounds to celebrate art on the second Sunday of each month. Jaaga has been engaged in exploring creative practices in the public space of the Wheeler Road Cox town flyover since May 2016. Working closely with the local community, the government and a wide range of artists through the years, we have experimented with contemporary art practices, investing creative energy in this location. While engaging with this space and the people who inhabit it, our community of artists brought to bear some critical questions.
Why?
- Showcase experimental art in public space:
Opening up practices beyond the white box of the studio to develop works in and for public space, in this case at the Flyover Country, Wheeler Road Flyover, Bangalore. - Encounter unusual audiences: Encounters with contemporary art and its formats of expressions are limited especially in public space. Here’s an opportunity to allow for such encounters with curious audiences from the neighbourhood, be it the local community of vendors, small business owners and their patrons or the creative community that walks over from Cooke Town, across the pedestrian bridge.
Who?
- Artists using the Spoken & Written word to push boundaries on the use of language be it English or Indian languages as a mode of intervention.
- Artists using Sound Art to Build a sound based body of work exploring multiple streams of art making and sonic methodologies.
- Artists using Performance, the body as a tool of artistic expression, the collective and the collaborative as a method.
- Artists using Artivism to present activism through the lens of art.
About the Space
Postcards by Rujuta to commemorate the creativity invested in the FlyoverCountry project at Wheeler Road, Cox Town, Bangalore, India. (Jan 2023)
As you walk by an unassuming space under a flyover in the bustling neighborhood of Cox Town’s Wheeler road, you will encounter a set of 7 pillars with painstakingly crafted 13 murals. Along with the vegetable vendors and street side food stalls who inhabit this flyover lies a 13 tonne granite marker with the story of Kcymaerxthaere’s Flyover Country enshrined onto it. With a mix of residences, small businesses, two government schools and PU college that immediately flanks the space, with light to no traffic that passes by as the road ends at a railway track that obstructs it, the flyover underbelly lends itself to possible artistic and collective community engagement.
Performers
Janara Jaaga
Smitha Cariappa
Through installations, video projections and performance she engages with different subjects such as culinary art and food, and is informed by urban fashion, urban gardening and animals.
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Pratyay Raha
He delves into field recording, soundscape compositions, while actively pursuing sound-based art-science-technology approaches to advance discussions and initiatives for climate change.
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Partners
We have been working in the field in a modest and carefully thought out capacity under flyovers for 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.
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.
Jaaga is a dynamic organization and community hub that serves as a collaborative space for artists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and creatives. This platform offers co-working facilities, hosts a wide range of events, workshops, and cultural activities, and supports projects spanning art, technology, and social entrepreneurship. Notably, Jaaga has played a pivotal role in nurturing Bengaluru’s innovative ecosystem, fostering a sense of community, and facilitating cross-disciplinary collaboration among individuals with diverse interests and backgrounds.
