BENGALURU: As someone with a background in art history and design, Suprita Moorthy was concerned when she read that India produces only 5,000-7,000 design graduates a year. Enter Bengaluru ByDesign, a festival that aims to explore and celebrate innovations in design.
“I wanted to increase awareness about design as a field,” says Moorthy, the founder of Bengaluru ByDesign and director at Kochi Muziris Biennale Foundation. In its second edition, the festival will include installations, talks and workshops.
The festival has three pillars: Experience, explore and engage. It will include a series of fun workshops, including one on rocketry and mobile photography. At the heart of these activities is the attempt at facilitating a conversation with design. For example, the installation Taburete Tower is also a community-building initiative, where people got together and were assisted by engineers and carpenters to make 120 ply stools that will be stacked into a superstructure. “We will dismantle it and distribute the stools, so that people remember the festival,” explains Moorthy.
Another installation, by British artist Liz West, will look at colour therapy through over 700 reflective acrylic discs. The festival will curate experiences for kids as well, particularly through their Vivid Books installation, which contains A5 sheets of paper that deal with scientific topics like Newton’s laws. One then has to place a tablet over these sheets, which will use animation to explain the topics.
One can also check out a photo series by artist Magali Couffon de Trevros. Co-curator Shraddha Nair reveals, “It is an exhibition of 10 portraits, 10 moments, 10 stories.”
The festival is slated to take place in different locations, including E-city, to bring it closer to the IT community, who Moorthy says, “often miss out on such phenomenons.” A talk on what the future of making involves will be held at the Titan campus, along with an exhibition of Polish posters from the Museum of Warsaw. “By taking the work outside a gallery space, we might be able to demystify it,” says Moorthy.
Bengaluru ByDesign will take place from Nov 15 to 24, across locations like Bangalore International Centre, The Lalit Ashok Bangalore, CoWrks Residency Road and Titan, E-City.