list 03: geography of the kochi biennale
Aspinwall House is a large sea-facing heritage property in Fort Kochi on the way to Mattancherry.
The property was originally the business premises of Aspinwall & Company Ltd. established in 1867 by English trader John H Aspinwall. Under the guidance of Aspinwall the Company traded in coconut oil, pepper, timber, lemon grass oil, ginger, turmeric, spices, hides and later in coir, coffee, tea and rubber.
The large compound contains office buildings, a residential bungalow and a number of warehouses and smaller outer-lying structures. Aspinwall House will be a primary venue of the Biennale, hosting numerous artist led projects and events spaces.
The Durbar Hall and its grounds are in the heart of the city, near Kochi’s main railway station Ernakulam South.
Built in the 1850s by the Maharaja of Cochin to host his Royal court, the Durbar Hall has had many incarnations over its 150 year history. Recent extensive renovation works by the Kochi Biennale Foundation have transformed the present Durbar Hall gallery into an international museum quality exhibition venue.
Under the guidance of award winning conservation architect Vikas Dilawari, the venue is now equipped with Erco LED museum lighting, climate control and disability access-the available exhibition space has also increased substantially.
Durbar Hall will be a primary venue for the Biennale.
A neighbour of David Hall, the Cochin Club dates back to the early 19th Century when it was an exclusive British Gentlemen’s Club. Today the Cochin Club remains as a private members club although is now also open to women. The Cochin Club has kindly granted the Biennale use of a portion of their grounds for exhibitions of installation art and sculpture works.
David Hall is a Dutch bungalow built around 1695 by the Dutch East India Company, located on the north side of Parade Ground in Fort Kochi. It is believed that during the Dutch occupation it was used to accommodate military personnel.
The hall is named after David Koder, a Jewish business man who later resided there with his family. Since 2007 the building has been leased by CNO India to CGH Earth, an ecologically conscious hotel group. David Hall is currently an art gallery and will be an important exhibition venue during the Biennale.
The gardens at the rear of the property will also host a variety of collateral events.
Parade Ground is a four acre open space in the heart of Fort Kochi, bordered by Cochin Club, David Hall, VOC Gate and St Francis Church where Vasco de Gama was originally buried in 1524.
Historically, Parade Ground was used by the Portuguese to store their armaments, and by the Dutch and the British to conduct military drills and parades.
Today Parade Ground is considered as a public square, where ceremonial parades are conducted and locals gather to play football, cricket and other sports.
During the Biennale, Parade Ground and other public spaces in Fort Kochi and Ernakulum can potentially host outdoor installations and a variety of cultural events.
Pepper House is a waterfront heritage property located on the Kalvathi Road in between Fort Kochi and Bazar Road. The building consists of two historic ‘godowns’ (an Indian word for a dockside warehouse), one facing the street and one overlooking the waterfront. These large, two-story buildings with Dutch style clay roofs are separated by a large courtyard which would have once been used for storing goods waiting to be loaded onto ships in the harbour.
The sixteen thousand square feet Pepper House complex is currently undergoing renovations and will eventually house a courtyard cafe, gallery, studios for artist residencies and event spaces.
In the long-term Pepper House is intended as an evolving project to create a multi-purpose space that will host and promote visual arts year round in Kochi.
This area, Mattanchery Warehouses, is the hub of the Kerala spice trade. Famous for tea, dried fruits, cashew nuts and rubber, it stretches from the Vypin Jetty along Calvathy Road and Bazaar Road to the Dutch Palace.
Since the formation of Cochin harbour following the floods of 1341 merchant ships have sailed to Kochi and dropped anchor at the mouth of the Calvathy river. The spices they sought were carried by boat from the inland waterways of Kerala and delivered to the docks at jetties which lined the harbour waterfront. The harbour became a hectic trading area where transactions were conducted and customs duties were levied. Eventually the Portuguese, Dutch and British came to this region one by one, laying the foundations for colonial rule.
There are numerous warehouses along this stretch of road, some are disused but many still function as spice ‘godowns’ or storage areas for antiques, food and other produce. The Kochi Biennale Foundation has secured over 100,000 sq feet of space for installation, projection and mixed media works. This would open a dialogue between “fine” art and urban decay as many of these structures are being reanimated from a severe state of disrepair.
Moidu’s Heritage Plaza. The property was formerly Allepey Company, a coir (coconut fibre) trading company. The coir industry is centered in Alappuzha (formerly called Allepey) 40 miles south of Kochi and is the largest cottage industry in the State of Kerala, giving employment to over a million people. Coir from Kerala supplies over 60% of the global market for white coir fibre. Coir was delivered to the building from inland by small wooden boats via the Calvathy Canal where it was woven, stored and packed for international shipping from Cochin Port.
The venue has been loaned to Kochi-Muziris Biennale by Shri PM Siddique and is being developed as an events hall and hotel.
Kashi Art Gallery is an old Dutch house converted by Anoop Scaria and Dorrie Younger, it opened in 1977 with an exhibition by Mr.C V Ramesh. Over the last 12 years Kashi Art Gallery and Café became the hub of Kochi’s contemporary art scene and the most popular hangout in the area for young locals and tourists.
The gallery has held some of the most important contemporary art exhibitions in Kochi, showcasing the work of artists such as NN Rimzon, Sosa Joseph, Zakkir Hussein, Valsan Koorma Kolleri and Anant Joshi.
In 2012 Edgar Pinto took ownership and worked with restoration architect Karl Damschen and designer Marc Delrome, to renovate the property whilst keeping heritage status intact, including the menu. The café contains a permanent collection of artworks by the likes of Christina Mamakos, K S Radhakrishnan and Pradeep Naik.
Kashi Art Café is located on Burgher Street, Fort Kochi and has been loaned to Kochi-Muziris Biennale by Edgar Pinto.
In partnership with Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the HFV-Project website —a codicil to Ariel Hassan’s HFV-Project series of works— offers a space for a parallel criteria through which we can all participate in the construction and analysis of the project’s rational. Using text as a tool for art, we are building an environment for a communal experience, a scenario through which we can speculate on our place and value in the future.
The initials in the title stand for Hypothetical Future Value, a term used in financial investment, redefined in the HFV-Project through presenting abstracted portraits of seemingly emotionless figures that evoke and acknowledge the potential and poignancy of youth, against the passing of time. Those portrayed, suggesting mythological, ancestral or eternal witnesses that exist perennially in youth, symbolise beauty, not subjective beauty, but in a way which follows the origin of the word from koine greek hōraios — that also relates to ‘hour’ or ‘time’. The project’s intent is therefore to capture youth at it’s best hour. Regardless of circumstances youth exudes a shared sense of extreme idealism that persists even after indoctrination by the laws and conventions of a society. The use of HFV as a nominal also works as a subtle critique on how the world defines material value, as the title itself implies an almost pathological tone. The HFV-portraits are emblems for a hypothetical ‘new’ and ‘more evolved’ (post)human form, in which a state of heterosis is in balance with heritage, and in which the weight of history is inscribed in the faces through painterly marks that act as a new skin or a sort of vivisection; the hypothesis is trying to describe young people that no longer are defined by current laws or descriptions. The people portrayed have been photographed in front of a screen to isolate them from perceived and projected idiosyncratic values, and interwoven with abstract organic fluids that undermine their cultural and socio-economic components, in order to present a more complex yet homogeneous new form.
The HFV-Project for Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, was conceived to be displayed directly in the streets of Kochi, and to engage with the local youth and its community; through this website we now invite everyone to offer their input with ideas on future values; we hope this pool of ideas will be a good place for anybody, anywhere in the world, to be part of the biennale, and to contrast their expectations, fears or hopes for the future with others.