If the alternative is gone, where will culture be born?

Thoughts on being an 'alt' art space.

Every month, someone from the Harkat team will use this space to reflect, speak and collate. It will always revolve around the alt world we surround ourselves with, which is very much our mainstream.

What is alternative? What is that feeling? To swim against the current. It can’t be labelled as disruption, it’s an injustice to all artists that came before us. It’s only fitting to call whatever is considered to be alternative an act of restoration. To find a forgotten legacy and let it resume. It’s the act of giving air to art that’s being suffocated by an industry.

It is a deeply historical process in the sense that alternate art reminds you of pure origins, it is questioning and reflective. It is an answer in itself. Isn’t that what history is about as well? Forcing you to reckon with ideas you were forced to forget. To be an alternative space is to remind art that it can remain without being bulldozed by postmodernist overfamiliarity. A reminder to create, with tenderness, emotion, passion, aberrations. To be thoughtful more than celebrated. To allow yourself to rise and fall instead of taking comfort in stagnation.

These spaces are the only window left to peer inside an artist’s mind. It is only here that you’re engulfed within someone’s world and for a fleeting moment feel as if you’re merging, like all the material boundaries have fallen to dust and it’s yourself on that stage, in those visuals. The self is moulded, broken and remade here. Among the very few places on earth, it’s within these walls, that you feel alive. What is the use of art if it can’t pierce you, shake you, change you?

If the alternative is gone, where will culture be born? Will thought remain? Or will we just become consumers? Absorbing everything thrown our way, without being able to differentiate. Here, within the darkened walls we are able to escape time and be the way we were meant to be, stripped of identity. Everyone interacts with the act, becomes the act. What happens when time becomes inescapable?

To preserve a thought is to preserve its medium. After all, it is the message. Here, the changing legacy of the medium is honoured. It is perhaps time to slow down, witness the churning of a film projector, allow bodies to flow in front of our eyes. To be in the cradle of art and feel something that’s new and old simultaneously.

We can’t live without art, and art can’t survive in the mainstream. The alternative protects it, replenishes it, sustains it, till it can soar once more, and do it all over again when it falls.

Understand what it means to love in the alternative at Harkat.

This month we have a beautiful 3-day dance workshop titled, ‘We Are Doing Things’, focused on letting expression flow through our bodies (starting today), led by the talented Sunayana Shetty.

Two unique theatrical pieces titled, ‘Waiting For Naseer’ and ‘The Lesson’ will be performed by Jainrangam.

We will also be hosting The Nazaria Short Film Showcase, created by young artists of Shankarwadi, sharing their brilliant voices with us. That will hopefully inspire us to create a more thoughtful world for these aspiring filmmakers.

Another big highlight is ‘Animasti’, a 48hr Animation film marathon. You sign up, get a subject and 48 hours to make an animation film. Best films get screened at Harkat and are showcased. Look out for more details on our Instagram page!

Love,

Mahreen

Link to our calendar on Insider: https://insider.in/go/harkat-studios-mumbai

Link to our calendar on Book My Show: https://in.bookmyshow.com/venue/harkat-studios-mumbai/HSMI