Paper short abstract:

The changes in the hydrosocial lifeworlds around lake Loktak is studied through various creative projects as undertaken by the indigenous artists and practitioners of Manipur, India.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation attends to the ways embodied and ecological issues, bodies and beings living along Loktak have been expressed through art. The Loktak lake in Manipur, India, has been a veritable lifeline of biodiversity ranging from human habitation on floating islands of biomass and conservation area housing an endangered species of deer. The freshwater ecosystem nurtured by the lake can be viewed as tangible evidence of water worlds as distinctive site from which cultural life, amongst others, can be revealed, interpreted and analysed. In the last decades, the hydrosocial lifeworld or the limit of ‘littoral community’ (Asem 2020) has been transformed as development and conservation projects undertaken by various authorities as well as degradation of bioresources by unpredictable climate crisis continued. In such contexts art plays two primary roles: it foregrounds insights and microhistories of past and present, and it registers resistance voicing the human and animal lives locked in dilemma. Art here emphasises the sustenance of traditional ecological knowledge that has nurtured fisheries, community-based and state-made ecotourism, aquaculture. This presentation draws from multiple sources – contemporary iterations of ancient Meitei ballads from Loktak Lairembee Seitharol and Moirang Saiyon, an essay on conservation titled Keibul Lamjao (1973) by author-activist M.K.Binodini Devi, staged choreography and film of Sangai – The Dancing Deer (1984/88), and conservation documentaries, namely, Phum Shang (2014) and Loktak Lairembee (2016) by director Haobam Paban Kumar. The richness of multiple narratives teases the limits of textual analysis but works towards understanding water ethnographies through interdisciplinary/multimodal perspectives.