Polit-Informatsia Under the Mango Tree

Visva-Bharati Institute | Santiniketan | Bengal | India

{In 2017 as the contributors to the first under the mango tree sat in the former waiting room of the Kassel Hauptbahnhof to discuss a possible future, many ideas were exchanged. Slow methods of postal correspondence, postcards to be written as a reminder of our time together and the promise that one day we would meet again. A pregnant pause sat heavy in the air as we all knew that when you have these moments of coming together - the mood is always hopeful but it's never known whether those energies will be enough. The reality of our everyday lives can render these moments as distant memories. Then an utterance. An invitation to make a gathering in Santiniketan - the very place that inspired under the mango tree. And so here we are - in a new configuration and a hope to shift our very beings by coming together}*

a typical open-air classroom at Visva-Bharati awaiting students

Free Home is enthusiastic to come back under the mango tree and take part in the second edition of this inter-spatial multi-pedagogical initiative. Hosted by Sepake Angiama, Tara Lasrado, and Sanchayan Ghosh who opened the gates of Visva-Bharati institute – a historical pedagogical experiment originated by Rabindranath Tagore a century ago in Santiniketan, Bengal.

In the spirit of opening spaces of learning, sharing practices, inspirations and politics in a generous, convivial way, we started with Sanchayan’s exercise with all participants casting their shadows under the bright morning sun in a large circle surfaced with red clay and cow-dung. We worked in couples, one person outlined the shadow of the other using a local traditional technique – a liquid mixture of white clay and raw rice paste. A monumental collective ornament, a group signature, an opening solar ensemble.

entangling our shadows

In the following five days, we were fulfilled with the flow of knowledges and practices, deep-diving conversations, free-falling discussions, all-night-long screening (with Abhijan Toto), 5 AM field trip (with Sharmila Samant), an ongoing indigenous ceramic atelier (with Jorge I. Gonzalez Santos, Rocío Tejada, Taylor Cruz), morning lectures on histories\legacies of Santiniketan (with Swati Ganguly and other faculties), tea-time debates, and collective grounding lunchtimes (by Dharitri Boro and her Indigenous and rural culinary culture in collaboration with Clare Butcher, care-givers and students of the University).

The whole dynamic of the gathering was sustained and uplifted by the students of Visva-Bharati, their profound engagement, fully-immersive curiosity. And everyone made their memorable contribution.

the classroom is now fully engaged

From Free Home Nikolay Oleynikov brought under that mango tree the practice of Polit-Informatsia. It is a daily exercise from Soviet-era schools, where students were required to report on the recent news and update their classmates before beginning class. This practice was introduced in the School of Engaged Art of Chto Delat and reinterpreted in Free Home University to critically inform the curriculum with the states of the world.

Under the mango tree Polit-Informatsia unfolded in four chapters\exercises:

Chapter 1. Introduction

Polit-Informazzia was launched in conjunction with Menakshi Thirukode’s Feminist Syllabus. Being an engaged activist Meenakshi informed the group about the ongoing student \ civil unrest in India, specifying on the role of women at the core of it by reading and analyzing a call for action published by #PinjraTod - a feminist activist group from New Delhi who inspired many.

The group of students and researchers that followed the learning program of Sharmila Samant contributed a lot throughout the course of Polit-Informatsia. While studying in depth the local ecosystem with the focus on the means of distribution of water resources they came up with their embodied experiential inputs.

Meenakshi informs the group about the principal role of women in the recent protest movement in India

Chapter 2. News from the Past

Participants brought personal examples of historical or\and ongoing political and civil movements they feel related to. Many stories from the village in Kashmir to the borders of Assam and Bengal, from Bangkok to Shies station, from India to Pakistan and beyond were (not) coincidentally introduced through sound pieces – songs of protest and resistance and the rich stories behind them.

Chapter 3. Registration in Space and Time

This exercise is featured in the film The Excluded. In a Moment of Danger by Chto Delat (2014) where participants introduce themselves referring to a significant event in time and a significant point in space that bring them to be present, - here and now.

Chapter 4. Altar to our Teachers

To exercise a Politics of Commemoration in the learning context of the Gathering, the participants were invited to build a temporary altar to those pedagogues who have inspired, transformed, and influenced our pathways. The exercise, originated in self-organised antifascist and feminist workshops to make props for political rallies was then introduced in both Free Home and Chto Delat’s practices. In January 2020 Chto Delat presented an altar as a part of Times, Lines, 1989s – a solo show at Khoj Artists’ Space in New Delhi. And Free Home offered the exercise for Dia de los Muertos during the Ecoversities Alliance Global Gathering in November 2019 in Michoacan, Mexico.

Harman Da, Gilles Deleuse, Parvez Kabir and other teachers

This practice is a way in which we share stories otherwise untold, remembering those who were examples of courage, dedication and resistance - we evoke activists and philosophers, poets and grandmothers, desaparecidxs and desobedientxs, reciting their names, poems, or singing their songs in Bengali, Spanish, and Hindi.

Bhaskar Hazarika recites the poem of Nabarun Bhattacharya. Abhijan translates from Bengali

On our last morning, we started on the patio of the Library of Visva-Bharati. Two learning streams had fused together: those who followed Polit-Informatsia joined the Drifting Classroom of Vincent Tao for a common exercise. During a three-day course participants of the Drifting Classroom made their consequent steps towards a manifesto. Analyzing and deconstructing the language of existing artistic\political manifestos they then focused on two levels of demands, inspired by Bread and Roses – a famous feminist anthem from the 1930's. The first level: Bread - our basic necessities. The second – Roses – perhaps more abstract, though essential to fight for. That last morning, the participants were invited to state their demands, which brought them to underline the economical, physical, psychological and political conditions of being students in India, and more precisely – at Santiniketan 100 years after Tagore.