THE CROSSOVER LOVE CLUB
A Durational community dialogue on Love , Crossover and a
generation with mixed parenthood
A work in progress
concept note for SENSORIUM 2016, Goa
SANCHAYAN GHOSH
History of colonialism created a process of meeting of the
unknown that often resulting into history of takeovers. In the process it has
created a parallel history of crossover, and co-habitance .It has accentuated the process
of migration which has often resulted into complex network of immigration. Places with memories of colonization and the
colonizers of the past centuries stand at the foothold of an irreversible
process of regeneration of interracial crossover that is both hybrid and
cosmopolitan. The notion of singular national identity will be always contested
with the coexistence of new communities that has emerged out of a Crossover
Love.
In this context one has also experienced counter cultural
projects of the rise of race purification, intolerance towards couples
belonging to different religion and often killing of young people to preserve
cultural purity and hegemony. In contemporary times the present global economic
situation has generated forced migration and a possible collapse of sovereignty
of national order. There is a probability that we are moving towards a new
world order of a binary between more confined individual racial identity and an
overlapped mixed racial community whose second generation has no specific land
to identify but a transnational state of locational reality.
Cities with past memories of being a colony or which has
evolved out of colonial migration have experienced a long history of Crossover
Love. Within India cities that have been under direct impact of colonial
takeover like Cochin, Goa, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai have nurtured a long
memory of overlap of multiple cultural lifestyle. Mappila community in Kerala
emerged out of a crossover Love between the Arab traders and the local women of
costal Kerala who has a distinct cultural practice that is neither a muslim nor
a typically Hindu .In more modern times in the last century Santiniketan that
projected a world view towards culture and lifestyle became the place for
people from all over the world come , meet and share .Santiniketan in coarse of
time has become the host of people from different culture and a open space for
people who believe in humanity and specific cultural,social and geographical
boundaries. But often in these cases of overlap there is an influence of the
dominant culture or language or lifestyle on the people who have migrated.
Crossover Love Club is a proposition to map these neo space of cultural overlap
their struggle, survival and resistance
to cultural hegemony of regional identity of race, caste and religion .
The present project will try to map this
emerging social and cultural space in the context of Goa. Goa has a unique
history of cultural crossovers and interracial existence. In this respect we
will create an online LOVE CLUB through the webpage of “Sensorium 2016” and
invite couples/ singles to generate a community for meeting of couples and
families that has emerged as a confluence of two different culture/ religion/caste/gender
etc. In the process there will be an online community that will emerge prior to
the Live interaction in Sunaparanta. As part of the Live interaction a
Shamiyana will be designed based on the preexisting historical narratives of
interracial/ cultural Love and Marriages in Goa and through the participation
of the people of Goa in the three day interactive dialogue and install it in
the amphitheater .
A poster for the LOVE CLUB will be uploaded in your webpage
, so that interested people who would like to join the meeting sessions to
share their stories in the space ,can enlist the names .
There will be seating arrangements that will be made as part
of the installation. The whole interactions sessions will be continued for a
period of two days. All the evenings of the two days sessions will share
interviews of children of interracial marriages and mixed couples . There will
be two to four interviewers who will receive the visiting people and write
about their experience . These interviewers will be pre rehearsed people who
will be dressed as marriage registers. These dialogues will be typed as a live
documentation for other viewers to read parallel.
Time duration
12th and 13th Feb, 2016 :4pm to 7pm
Dialogue/ performance
and completion of the shamiyana: two days
14th Feb, 2016: 5pm to 8pm
Installation of the shamiyana and Interactive
session and discussions
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