[INDOLOGY] March 18th GCSAS Lecture Series: Songs of Climate and Caution: Human and Non-Human Entanglements in Contemporary Scroll Paintings (Patachitra) from Bengal (Priyanka Basu)

[Akshara Ravishankar]

Dear all,

We are excited to announce the second lecture of the annual online lecture
series organized by the Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies, on *March
18th at 4 pm CET, fully online. *This year’s theme is “More-than-Human
South Asia: Ecologies, Knowledge, Bodies, and Senses.” The full programme
can be found here
<https://www.india.ugent.be/2026-gcsas-lecture-series-more-than-human-south-asia2/>,
along with registration links. The first talk, by Eduardo Acosta, is
tomorrow at 5 pm CET.

You can register for the March 18th talk here
<https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a7615d65-1052-43f4-b1fb-03e3db1929f8@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c>,
and further information is attached.

Title: Songs of Climate and Caution: Human and Non-Human Entanglements in
Contemporary Scroll Paintings (Patachitra) from Bengal

Speaker: Priyanka Basu (Kings College, London)

Abstract:

Patachitra or scroll-paintings is an audio-visual performance genre found
in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal and in Bangladesh. The patachitra
 can also be found in slightly different formats in other eastern states
such as Odisha and in Nepal, thus making it a ubiquitous intermedial
presence in South Asia. In this talk, I focus on contemporary Patachitra from
the village of Naya (West Bengal, India). In the art form of Patachitra,
the scroll-painter and singer (known as Patua or Chitrakar) unfurls the
long-painted scrolls accompanied by a song- much in the form of a film
strip that has often accorded the Patachitra the epithet of ‘precursors to
the bioscope’. The lives of the scrolls and the scroll-painters are
embedded in the ecological shifts around them. Naturally, these have gone
into becoming the subjects of the paintings and the songs. Based on a
recent fieldwork in the village of Naya, this talk focusses on how
contemporary scroll-painters are refurbishing older ecological themes in
their scrolls as well as creating new ones out of their lived perceptions
of the climate crisis. Subjects such as global warming, earthquakes, the
need to plant trees, the COVID-19 pandemic and so on have often been
depicted in fusion with more traditional mythological and folkloric
narratives. More importantly, the human and non-human entanglements in the
Patachitra have manifested through narratives of syncretism, caution,
lament and collective existence. Bringing some examples from the rich and
diverse varieties of the scrolls (such as Joraano Pat, Jadu Pat, Jam Pat and
 Gazir Pat), this talk underlines the scroll-painter as a resilient
‘precariat’ (Zanatta & Gera Roy, 2021). It, therefore, asks why a close
look at this art form offers us a lens for ‘pivoting between de- and recentring
humans where needed’ (Buscher, 2021) in their entanglement with the
non-human.


Hope to see many of you online soon!

Warmly,

Akshara Ravishankar
Sara Mondini
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