‘Chembankuthira’ is a reflection of images from Jerome’s art practice, where his habitual routine of image making explores freedom of expression to interact with the notions of self, art education, and social circumstances of the surroundings. Where through this exhibition we welcome everyone to the open spaces for conversations.
കലാപ്രവർത്തനം എന്നത് നിത്യജീവിതത്തിന്റെ ഒരു പ്രതിഫലനമായിരിക്കെ കലാകാരൻ്റെ ആവിഷ്കാര സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തിൽ നിന്നുകൊണ്ട് വ്യക്തി, കലാപഠനം, പൊതുസമൂഹം എന്നീ വിഷയങ്ങളിൽ ഇടപെടാൻ ശ്രമിക്കുക എന്നതാണ് ‘ചെമ്പൻ കുതിര’യിലൂടെ ജെറോം പങ്കുവയ്ക്കുന്നത്. കലയ്ക്ക് പുറമെ തുറന്നുള്ള സംസാരങ്ങളെയും ആഗ്രഹിച്ചു കൊണ്ട് സംഘടിപ്പിക്കുന്ന ഈ കലാ പ്രദർശനത്തിലേക്ക് ഏവരെയും സ്വാഗതം ചെയ്യുന്നു.
2026 January 06-20 At Forplay Society, Kochi, Kerala.
“Farewell, Blacksmith Street” is an Audio-Video Installation from the Blacksmith Project by Yenting Hsu.
Initiated in 2019, The Blacksmith Project focuses on Taipei’s once-thriving Blacksmith Street — Xingcheng Street. This street used to be a gathering place for metal processing industries due to the demand for parts from the ship dismantling industry. However, with the industrial shift and the gradual expansion of the city, these metalworking businesses faced the fate of fading away. In recent years, the scope of Blacksmith Street has been shrinking, and under the wave of urban development, the neighborhood has lost its former appearance.
Yenting was born in Blacksmith Street and spent her childhood between hardware shops and small iron working factories. Despite moving with her family at the age of seven, the intense flashes of cutting metal and the smell of lubricating oil lingered in the artist’s memories, making it impossible for her to leave this place behind. Returning to Blacksmith Street in adulthood, the artist sought to explore not just childhood memories but also the narratives reflected in the urban landscape and the life experiences of the citizens amidst the grand narratives of international situations and government policies.
“Farewell, Blacksmith Street” weaves together the artist’s voice with archival data files, images, interviews, and news materials collected over the years. By reassembling these fragments, the work constructs a new narrative layer, offering an imaginative entry point into the history, memory, and transformation of Blacksmith Street.
Tholpavakoothu performance by Krishnan Kutty Pulavar Memorial Tholpavakoothu Puppet Center, Shornur /(@tholpavakoothu) 🔅
Followed by an Open Dialogue on the Artist’s Agency and Labour in Tholpavakoothu with the Tholpavakoothu Artists and Academic Resource Persons from the Dept. of English, @bharatamatacollege_
Happening on 20/01/2026 at @forplaysociety from 5.00 pm – 8.30 pm.
Tholpavakoothu is a traditional shadow puppet theatre of Kerala, performed with intricately designed leather puppets. Deeply rooted in temple rituals, the art form brings epic narratives to life through evocative storytelling, rhythmic music, and skilled performance. Once performed exclusively in temple spaces and governed by religious norms, caste, and gender conventions, Tholpavakoothu today moves across secular, commercial, and global performance contexts.
The performance self-reflexively chronicles the Tholpavakoothu artists’ journey from being exclusively ritual performers to their assertion of ownership and agency over their art. This metanarrative features distinct embedded narratives, and the performance functions as a living archive of the artists’ experiences and the dynamic cultural practice of Tholpavakoothu.
The open dialogue focuses on the changing role of artists within the ritual shadow puppetry tradition of Tholpavakoothu in Kerala. The discussion examines how this transition reshapes artistic agency, labour conditions, and questions of ownership, while also highlighting the evolving relationship between ritual arts, the state, and contemporary cultural economies.
FEEL FREE TO JOIN US ! COME WITH YOUR INSTRUMENTS AND JOIN US ! FUN / WOO HOO / PERCUSSION TRIBE is a vibrant collective consisting of supported by dance, vocals and experimental welcomes people from all backgrounds to explore sound, movement and creativity together. Illustration by Yanung Huang
We invited Wang Yu Wen & Lin Jui Yu from The Dulan Art Community, Taitung, Taiwan so introduce their method of working and exploring into the realms of social orientated art practices. For this they will conduce the following workshops which will conclude in a presentation of the results @ Forplay Society:
Workshop 1 – Free admission
Wang Yu Wen: Landscapes in the Hands
(2 sessions / 60 minutes per session )
14 / 01 / 2026 3.00 pm 16 / 01 / 2026 3.00 pm
Concept This workshop centers on unconscious bodily gestures embedded in everyday life —moments often overlooked as the mind drifts elsewhere. By returning attention to the hands as sites of repetitive, tacit action, participants are invited to re-engage with their bodies and reframe perception through image-making. Using plant-based dye development techniques, participants draw their own hands and transform these drawings into collective visual traces. The resulting images are later assembled into a moving-image work, emphasizing shared embodiment and the politics of attention.
Process
1. Screening of excerpts from plant-dye animation works created in Taiwan
2. Introduction to plant-based dye development techniques
3. Hand-drawing session
4. Post-production and compilation of images into a video work
Workshop 2 – Free admission
Lin Jui Yu: Co-Twisting
(2 sessions / 60 minutes per session )
15 / 01 / 2026 3.00 pm 17 / 01 / 2026 3.00 pm
Concept Thread-making becomes a metaphor for encounter. A single fiber cannot form a thread alone; twisting requires relation, friction, and difference. Same-fiber, doubleply, or mixed-material twists reflect the varied conditions under which people meet —without hierarchy or judgment. The workshop introduces natural fibers traditionally used on Taiwan’s east coast— such as paper mulberry, shell ginger, screw pine, and ramie—and co-twists them with materials gathered locally in Kochi. Through tactile engagement, participants experience material difference as a form of dialogue.
Process
Introduction to natural plant fibers from eastern Taiwan
Co-twisting Taiwan fibers with locally collected materials
Creation of a collective installation work as part of the residency outcome
The workshops are supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan, C.Rockefeller Center and Netzwerk Medien Kunst.
This creative workshop explores sound, movement, and taste as interconnected carriers of cultural memory, drawing from Taiwanese music traditions and everyday practices surrounding bubble tea. Blending traditional instruments, DIY straw sound-making, movement, and collective improvisation, the session invites participants to experience how the body stores and reactivates cultural and sonic knowledge.
Beginning with an introduction to traditional Taiwanese double-reed instruments such as the suona and yāmudí, the workshop examines sound production through breath, vibration, and bodily coordination. Participants are encouraged to experience how posture, breathing, and movement shape sound and musical expression.
Everyday gestures—chewing tapioca pearls, sucking or biting straws, and playful interactions with bubble tea—are reframed as sources of sonic memory and creative material. Through hands-on straw instrument making and group jam sessions, these familiar actions are transformed into tools for nonverbal communication, rhythm, and collective play.
By combining sound, movement, taste, and social interaction, the workshop highlights how culture is transmitted beyond language—through signals, bodily habits, and shared sensory experiences—revealing sound as both a physical vibration and a powerful carrier of identity, memory, and emotion.
Date: 14th January 2026 Time: 11 AM to 2 PM Venue: ABC Art Room, Water Metro Station, Fort Kochi
Who can apply: The workshop is open to the general public.
In their new standup show, ALOK keeps finding themself in hairy situations: being mistaken as a mega-famous Brazilian DJ, botching Youtube makeup tutorials and signing up for an appointment for a body hair wax. An internationally acclaimed poet, comedian, public speaker and actor, ALOK has captivated audiences in 40+ countries, with sold-out shows at Just For Laughs, Edinburgh Fringe and Netflix is a Joke Fest. Their first comedy special “BIOLOGY!” was executive produced by Christopher Guest. They are the subject of the docu-short “ALOK” executive produced by Jodie Foster, which made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival.
Alok (they/them) is an internationally acclaimed poet, comedian, public speaker, and actor. Alok`s literary works “Beyond the Gender Binary,” “Femme in Public,” and “Your Wound, My Garden,” have garnered global recognition. Their dynamic presence has captivated audiences in over 40 countries, with sold-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Netflix Is a Joke Festival. Alok`s first comedy special Biology! was executive produced by Christopher Guest. They are the subject of the docu-short “Alok” executive produced by Jodie Foster and directed by Alex Hedison, which made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024.
Close Observation and Situated Practice: The Dulan Art Community, Taitung
Wang Yu Wen & Lin Jui Yu (40 minutes)
This lecture reflects on the formation of the Dulan art community in Taitung, Taiwan, through the artists’ first-hand experiences of relocation, collective living, and creative practice. Dulan, an Indigenous coastal village with a traditionally matrilocal social structure, offers an alternative social model distinct from the patriarchal norms prevalent in other regions of Taiwan. The lecture traces the emergence of artistic gatherings from Jinzun Beach in the early 2000s—where Indigenous returnees, new settlers, and international residents lived and created together—to the Dulan Sugar Factory as a key site of artistic convergence. It further examines how art intersects with civic action, focusing on artist-led environmental resistance against the illegal development of Shanyuan Bay (the Miramar Resort project), a movement that resulted in Taiwan’s first successful citizen lawsuit. Through these situated narratives, the lecture positions art as a form of lived practice embedded in land, community, and collective responsibility.
WITH Forplay Society, Seljuk Rustum, Articultural Society, Zalman Farizy, S. S. Santosh Kumar, Yenting Hsu, Ola Zielińska among others
SAVVYZΛΛR joins hands with Forplay Society and Articultural Society – SAVVY Kwata for a live radio session in the framework of the 6th Kochi Muziris Biennale Collateral.
At the heart of the vibrant public program hosted by Forplay Society & Articultural Society in the framework of the 6th Kochi Muziris Biennale Collateral, together with their members and guests we reflect on various practices of being together, sharing knowledges, inviting play as a method of resistance and transformation.In the three-hour experimental radio broadcast we open up the liminal pathway between geographies, stories, time, practices and memories.
SAVVYZΛΛR is an experimental community radio and artistic platform based within the non-profit art space of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, Germany. It is a space negotiating and delinking from the ideologies, practices and continuities of the collective and entangled repercussions of the “colonial enterprise”. An invitation into where the body meets the voice, as they find their places in the airwaves. Sensing the physical in the virtual, visiting the public in the intimate and otherwise. We mark and re-mark questions, underlining them, to agree in unconformity, finding ourselves in the in-between, “[where] new cultural identities are formed, reformed, and constantly in a state of becoming”, as Homi K. Bhabha exclaims.
installation on the picture by Zalman Farizy // photo: Andreas Ullrich (C.Rockefeller Center)
