Kochi-Muziris Binnale as a Macro Artefact a Lecture by Manuela Ciotti

This talk examines how the widely circulated biennale global cultural form was appropriated in the city of Kochi during the first two editions of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale . The talk takes an unusual anthropological view of the biennale as an artefact resulting from a complex branding process, and highlights some of its key features: the link between Kochi’s image and the archaeological site of the ancient port of Muziris and its past cosmopolitanism; the revitalization of heritage venues by art display; and the biennale’s virtual presences through its Facebook page and the Google Art Project.
Manuela Ciotti received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the London School of Economics (LSE). She is currently Associate Professor of Global Studies at Aarhus University, and ‘Framing the Global’ Fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington. Manuela has an extensive fieldwork experience and has written on the topics of modernity, subaltern communities, gender and politics, and more recently, on art and society. Under the ‘Framing the Global’ initiative, she is carrying out a multi-sited ethnography focusing on exhibitions of modern and contemporary art from India held in Asia, Europe and the USA. Manuela has published several essays in journals such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Modern Asian Studies, Feminist Review, The Journal of Asian Studies, and Third World Quarterly among others, and is the author of the book entitled Retro-Modern India. Forging the Low-Caste Self (Routledge 2010). Manuela is currently "Urban Language Network Asia ' (UKNA) Fellow at the Indian Institute of Urban Settlements (IIHS) in Bangalore.