PIXELS // Family Picture

So almost everyone was there at the BOX Studio the other day so we had a family picture. BOX is a network of collectives that includes BLOT, Quicksand, CoDesign, BlindBoys, FattaBox and GreenHouse for now, and hopefully a few more in the future. The idea is to work together to build new partnerships and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

PROJECTS // The Grey Garden (coming very soon)

So take the first look at our new project. Its a space / bar / concept restaurant called 'The Grey Garden' (inspired by the film Grey Gardens). The space is located within the store and studio of Cell Dsgn, designers of the fashion brand 11.11 - one of India's nicest testaments to contemporary global fashion. 11.11 and BLOT are coming together to create a tiny little concept restaurant in Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, and you will have to watch this space for more. Take a look at some pictures from the development of this space, from the starting identity concept, to the breaking down of the earlier space, and new construction. Super exciting adventure. We have been cooking too!

PROJECTS // Parallel Dimensions

Just came across a bunch of old pictures from the earlier Parallel Dimensions gigs. Parallel Dimensions is a project featuring Thiruda (BLOT), Sattyananda (Audio Aashram) and Jayalakshmi Eshwar (Abhinayaa School of Dance) >>

BLOT // Puma Creative Factory

BLOT was part of the Puma Creative Factory programme recently and we got our own customized shoes :-) These are the ones Gaurav and Funny Feral got for themselves >

RANDOM // 'Love' on the floor

LensKap took a picture of the floor in our new studio FattaBox in Hauz Khas Village, Delhi, and what serendipity that it says 'Love' in the Basic Love Of Things studio > only in India :-) !!

GreenHouse // 'BlindGirls' Photo Exhibition

Blind Girls: A diverse showcase of photography from Asian women photographers doing photojournalism, documentaries, and visual story-telling, alongside the work of emerging women photographers living in Delhi

Blindboys.org brings you the "Asian Women Photographers Showcase 2010," a slideshow exhibition curated by Yumi Goto. The evening will include a presentation of the showcase, alongside an informal exhibition of the work of other women photographers living in New Delhi. We also invite other female photographers to bring their own prints to share on a collage wall at The Greenhouse.* The event will end with refreshments and a lively discussion. See you there! 

Date: 6pm-close, Saturday, January 22nd, with the exhibition & collage open to the public through January 29th.

GreenHouse // Make-A-Thon 02 > ' Whats Your Type?'

"Words have meaning and typography has feeling. When you put them together, it's spectacular!" - Paula Scher

Turmeric Design and The Greenhouse are collectively bringing you our second Make-a-thon, "What's Your Type?", an event for anyone interested in playing with lettering and typography! This event is open to all and will take place at The Greenhouse next Saturday & Sunday, January 15th-16th. 

The Plan: 

1. Pick your words/phrase/lyrics/etc. before you come

2. Find/make type (out of anything at all - magazines, newspapers, leaves, sticks, crayons, paint, ink, etc.!) 

3. Play!

4. Display 

GreenHouse // 'Personal Poetic Cinema' Workshop

'Personal Poetic Cinema' is a short, intensive workshop that will push students to stretch and expand beyond the ways film has traditionally been used in the industry, and instead, explore various definitions of the medium as it is used by artists. It's 'personal' because participants will tell their own stories and share their own ideas, and 'poetic' because the images used will be metaphorical, not literal visuals translating words or depicting an action. The teaching method involves showing many examples from the avant-garde experimental works of the 1960-70s (Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Robert Beavers, Nathaniel Dorksy) and the resurgence of that style in the recent years (esp. in California) and will involve two to three hands-on assignments. All of the students will complete one film by the end of the workshop, which will be shared in a special screening at the greenhouse after the workshop is completed.

We will talk about the process of visual imagining, the process of editing images, and hold informal critiques to look at everybody's work-in-progress/final works. Workshops will be held in three-hour sessions over four weekends, January 30th - February 20th. Students should have access to and be able to use a basic video camera and a basic non-linear editing system (iMovies, Premier Pro or Final Cut Pro). Students will be expected to shoot footage on their own time. 

This workshop is led by Sandhya Kumar, an independent artist who works in film, video and photography. Rooted in non-fiction, her documentary and experimental short films are informed by a desire to make visible the poetry of everyday life. Stories of people and places, desires and memories, are often told through spaces in landscape and architecture. More about Sandhya and her work are at http://sandhyakumar.com/ 

To register for this workshop, e-mail kassia@quicksand.co.in no later than January 24th. Cost of the workshop is Rs. 2400.

Greenhouse // 'I Heart Small Books' Make-A-Thon

So things are officially nicely underway at our new place 'GreenHouse'. Take a look at this video and images from the super-intimate and wonderful event we had called 'I Heart Small Books' - which invited people to make small books and get them to GreenHouse for a mini-exhibition. I was really surprised pleasantly to see the enthusiasm that people had to undertake something like this. Its a great sign and restores faith in peoples' needs to enjoy simple things that are more in tune with childhood. Watch this space for more make-a-thons coming up soon!

Make-a-thon // 1 : I ♥ Small Books from The Greenhouse on Vimeo.

GIG VIDEOS // BLOT @ Sunburn 2010

So we were asked to curate and perform on the experimental stage at the Sunburn Festival in Goa in late December 2010. MoCity (Reggae Rajahs) was nice enough to shoot and post a little video from the night, since we couldn't between food poisoning and little sleep.

What did I think of Sunburn ? lets just say it was nice in a people watching, ethnographic sort of way, and pretty irrelevant for me in terms of the musical programming. I wish they had paid the 'experimental' stage and the artists on it some more respect by investing a bit more on the infrastructure, since it just looked like a bad experiment ;-) But we had fun nevertheless like we always do, whether its in the inspiring, the bizarre or the faintly surreal.