Short Abstract:

Celebrate Kolkata’s intellectual legacy with a tribute to Amartya Sen and Rabindranath Tagore. Embrace the diverse talents of HDCA members through music, narrative, poetry, and visual arts. This session fosters creative expression and curiosity, showcasing our manifold abilities. Join us for an inspiring journey into the richness of human potential and creativity.

Long Abstract:

[This is a special submission for a Cultural Plenary, as discussed with the conference organizer Arunima S. Mukherjee, and conference officer Nozomi Sakata. Please consult with them for further details]

This plenary pays homage to two luminaries emergent from Kolkata’s creative and intellectual diversity: Amartya Sen and before him, Rabindranath Tagore. In upholding the diversity of life, talents, potentialities as well as various ‘beings and doings’, we celebrate the sundry hidden talents of HDCA’s members by revelling in our manifold abilities and talents as creative beings beyond our everyday role as academics. Bringing together music, narrative, poetry and the visual arts, this hour and a half/two hours session manifests our creative abilities in various stages of facility and without contest (i.e. not a talent contest). Together, we rekindle the creative curiosity, mirth and inspiration through a broad spectrum of what it means to be a flourishing being with an abundance of inspired savoir faire.

Technical requirements

We aim to organise this session on the basis of what is normally furnished at a plenary space and session. This includes sound systems with microphones and speakers, web-capabilities for a hybrid-online viewing, video capabilities for slides/video projections, along with space for physical presentations (e.g. photographs, posters etc.). As some entries would be performative, sufficient space should also be available. This is normally provided for at a plenary, and one reason why we aim to set this as such an event (rather than as one parallel session). The other natural reason such a session would be most suitable as a plenary is also because of its nature: all HDCA members should have a chance to celebrate the diverse talents and abilities, rather than be split between attending a parallel session. As a homage to Tagore and Sen, everyone should have a chance to mark the occasion together.

The ECRPN Team will assist in installing and clearing the set up for the session, assigning appropriate personnel with experience to coordinate the sound/video tech-requirements. The team will work closely with the specialised tech personnel in this regard. Some soundsystem adjustments might be needed in the case where electronic instruments are used. The team will strive to source these from the performers themselves, if not via a coordinating member (Erdal Bayraktar) who has ample experience as a musician in a band himself, and can furnish some of the needed sound equipment.

Portable/adjustable lights/lamps systems might also be needed, along with access to dim/turn off stage lights. This is for content line-ups that require focus: visual arts performative, book/poetry readings etc.

Resource requirements

Much like the technical requirements, we aim to organise this session on the basis of what is normally furnished at a plenary. To be fair across the board, invitations from the HDCA membership will be in-kind contributions. Notwithstanding this, some ancillary cost may foreseeably arise. For example, if a musician is doing a cover of another’s work, a mechanical licence for the piece has to be secured. Likewise, if a performative piece utilises a piece of composition, music or video that is not in the public domain, the respective licences too have to be procured. These are necessary to guard the association from any legal risks even if the session is not intended as a commercial event. For these purposes, our team will consider all the various ancillary fees that may arise, and make this clear from the outset so as to be prepared. All-in-all, since the content of the session is principally in-kind contributions, any foreseeable cost will be minimal, and comparatively much lesser than a conventional plenary session and its logistical cost requirements (e.g. keynote flights/accommodation etc.).

Other considerations

For purposes of inclusivity and outreach, we intend for the session to be hybrid and recorded so that members who are unable to make the conference in-person, are in a different time zone, and are attending it online, along with the broader interested public (post-conference), will also be able to share in the experience. Where and when this session can be inserted into the conference programme is, consultatively, at the discretion of the programming committee, though it would be optimal if the arrangements, especially regarding the technical requirements, could be discussed together with our organisers (as equipment will have to be brought, set up, and prepared with ample time).

Concluding remarks

Beyond celebrating our member’s diverse talents, this session will also mark the cosmopolitan and pluralistic creative ethos that has been a mainspring of much of the capabilities approach and a legacy of the milieu Rabindranath Tagore engendered. We believe this session will be abundantly germane to the site of Kolkata, the spirit of Tagore, and to the convictions of the capabilities approach and our association.

(Organised by the Early Career Researchers and Practitioners network (ECRPN))