About PERI FERRY

Contextualized in the North East of India, the objective of this project is to create a discourse on the notion of borders and to explore an alternative imagination of cross-border transaction along south/south East Asian borders through cross media intervention. The project is conceptualized in many stages.

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North East India is the northeastern borderland 0f south asia, but the region can also be described as the northwestern borderland of southeast Asia.

The idea that South Asia is a discrete geographical region separated from south east Asia is a fiction. There are no “natural” geographical boundaries separating south and southeast Asia along the Indo-Myanmarese border. In territorial terms today’s ‘South Asia’ is to a large extend successor to the entity called ‘British India’. Northeast India’s ties – historical, cultural, social and economic – do not stop at these international boundaries. Of particular concern is the “territorial trap” in which northeast India has been caught as a “sensitive border region”.

In recent years Northeast India has been known for its numerous armed insurgencies, political violence, human rights violation and a generalized democracy deficit.

A position of being geographical landlocked is more to do with spatial imaginary seen through the national-cultural map, Inn this workshop we would like to look at borders as a space for immense trans-border activities. In fact a natural network created through the river route that has never really closed. People, goods. Idea flows constantly through this route creating a zone of intense activity and fluidity. With the globalization and the altered relation between subjectively, location, political identification and the social imagination, the traditional indigenous identities are undergoing constant reconfiguration and hybridization.

The use of electronic media and the internet based application is significant in these location in that it provides a new tool for deterritorialization. Affording a space for disseminating of information, ideas and opinion outside the political, governmental realm, a space that is hard to come by in this overtly charged area.  

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The main idea will be create an alternative space of discourse to confront their limitation of border and initiating a trans border communication., and in doin so it will also provide a ground for a more radical notion of knowledge itself.
The workshop thus build their powerful repertoire of ideas and practices by willfully juxtaposing individual from diverse contexts and making this exchange the basis of producing art and knowledge about art. This juxtaposing is the best way in which we can balance out the subjective and objective dimension of art and knowledge where diverse values and ideas challenge each other and allow for the emergence of new ideas and practices.

The self-proclamation and definition of this type of experience as alternative spaces, seeks to confront the hegemony of established systems. By the creation, circulation and promotion of artistic works, both locally and internationally, it hopes to configure and create a network of artists from various geographic background, possible from many frontiers. 

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The objective of the project is going to be done in many stages.

1)    The idea of creating nomadic location for a temporary media lab (to begin with in Guwahati and Shillong) to initiate study the connections of the new media with periphery and initiating a sound lab. New media don’t really carry the burden of a long centric art history and therefore are ideal to be used to create new visual language

2)    The creation of the network space or meet space for negotiating the challenge of
Contemporary cultural production. In hypothesis it is contextualized to be done on a ferry, a floating space on river Brahmaputra which connects most of the south Asian countries. Organizing seminars on the contemporary artistic production, initiating a global-local interaction of art.

3)    Create a residency space for artists mostly from south and southeast Asian
countries to negotiate the border. Organize events (talks, symposia, colloquia etc) and publication (research reports and creative publications) in the public realm to foster critical debate.