Our journey to India will start on March 1st, afer having a great Kick Off Party and Goodbye Dinner with many friends and collegues in the Stroomhuis in Eindhoven.

This preview is partly a review. sometimes we make major updates of what have happened so far. the rest is preview.

0. kilometer ranking and slide show overview.
Click here to see some impressions

1. program with Baylor Black Sea Foundation.
3 days program with children and students in Constanta, Rumenia.
This program is focussed on awareness of HIV in Rumenia.
Final presentation in the local Constantsa Museum.

election fun:
3 presentations
260 visitors, 250 votes
memorable paintings:

2. program with Hafriyat Gallery in Istanbul and Anadolu Kultur Merkezi in Kars.
4 days program in the Hafriyat Gallery in Istanbul, 3 days in Kars, completed with street presentations and media coverage.

election fun Istanbul:
5 days presentation
240 visitors, 34 votes
memorable paintings:

election fun Kars:
3 presentations
400 visitors, 247 votes
memorable paintings:

3. program with NAA, the national state academy in Tbilisi.
3 day program to introduce the 1700 students to the power of concept, and the content of our concept:hope.

election fun:
3 days presentation
725 visitors, 247 votes
memorable paintings:

4. program In Azarbeidjan
personal presentation to Adil Rustamov, professor and laureate of Baku. There has not been any official program in azerbeidjan due to the extreme bureaucratic system of this county that could be a new paradise, using their oilmoney, but in fact is a new pain in the ass country because the leaders steal and the people do not want to stay behind with nothing, and also start stealing.

5. Program The House of Artists in Iran
On invitation of Mr. Massoud Shojia Tabatabai, director of the House of Cartoons in Iran we had a two days program in Teheran and a spontanious exhibition in the city of Yazd.

election fun:
2 days presentation in Teheran
425 visitors, 347 votes
memorable paintings:

1 day presentation in Yazd
125 visitors, 99 votes
memorable paintings:

6. Program with Vaishwik Gallery
7 weeks progam in cooperation with the Vaishwik Gallery in Pune, India.
This program will take us to 7 major Indian cities where we will present at galleries and in cooperation with local artists we will prsent to schoolchildren and spontanious on the street.

Amristar
election fun:
1 day presentation at S.G. Thakar Singh Art Center
125 visitors, 51 votes
memorable paintings:

Chandigarh
election fun:
3 days presentation at Lalit Kala Akademi
100 visitors, 64 votes
memorable paintings:

Dehli
exhibitions at Lakayat Gallery, Hauz Khas; Press club of India and The Fine Arts And litrature Academy.
only votings at Lokayat Gallery:

Agra
Exhibition at Hotel Lauries for the Dragonman crew and audience: not your kind of exhibition. 34 paintings in vote.
election fun:

Bal Ashram, Virat Nagar, Jaipur
Eelection fun with 100 kids and 10 people staff:

Ahmedabad, Gujarat
No elections fun due to the fact we have no more voting ballots. Here the some paintings used by the children activities.

Nashik, Maharashtra
Election on emotional base.

Upcomming:

Puna
Bangalore
Goa
Mumbai

6. Program in the Middle East
Exhibitions in Dubai, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

7. Program in Istanbul
second view

8. Program in Balkan
special presentations in Belgrade, Prishtina, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Ljubljana.

Getting into India

S.G. Thakar Singh Art Center, Amritsar, Punjab

Chandigarh, Punjab Arts Council & Lalit Kala Akademi




Delhi, Lokayat Gallery, Hauz Khas


Dehli, Press Club of India

Delhi, Academy of Fine Arts and Litrature


Agra, Hotel presentation at Hotel Lauries


Bal Ashram, Virat Nagar, Jaipur, Radjastan


Ahmedabad, Kanoria Center for Arts , Gujarat

Nashik, center .... ...., Maharashtra

Get our next update: Pune and the new selection

The first week in India. What a week. Sometimes things must be arranged upfront, even weeks and month upfront. In fact in Netherlands things get organized one and a half year upfront. But here, in India, things can be arranged a day upfront. And how!

Amritsar, Punjab

In Amritsar we had a great exhibition in the S.G. Thakar Singh Art Center. A beautiful location and the women in charge, Miss Nita, informed everybody, including press.
So the one day presentation received more then 100 people and great press release. Including interesting winners at the popular vote, since 5 paintings made it to the top ranking of which three who do not get there too often.
We aslo fixed the radiator of the truck and then went to Chandigarh, the city build by Le Courbouisier.

Chandigarh

This is a complete different city. Cobra influences in birds.... Where Amritsar is a relatively normal Indian city, crowded with everything you can imagine and a huge Golden Temple complex attracting 40.000 people per day, Chandigarh is a new city with wide streets, 1400 parks, two goverments (of the two states Punjab and Harayna) plus a city government run by the national state. Chandigarh is open, relaxed, artistic and multicultural. Our presentation takes place for three days in the Punjab Arts Council. It was officially opened by the Secretary of Arts and had reviews in 5 newspapers. These reviews attracted over 150 people from Chandigarh, the two neighboring cities Mohaly and Pamuchalk and people from even further away. About 10 artists requested to participate and that means our new selection, with Indian artists, is growing and starting to get body. Above all we are very happy with the possible participation of H.N. Suresh, a Bangalore based artist that was exhibiting in the same days as we did in the location of Alliance Francais.

Dehli, Capitol

We move on to Delhi, the capitol. We do not expect to be welcomed to enthousiasticly as we have been welcomed in Amritsar and Chandigarh, because people in the capitol are always much more busy doing their own thing then people in the province cities are.
Luckily to us the province cities are inhabited by millions of people. We’re doing great and enjoying the attention we get.

Agra, Uttar Pradesh

After having a fabulous start up in Punjab and Chandigarh we finished the last week in Dehli. Three exhibitions, three locations, just a few dozen spectators; the capitol is always busy. Without upfront announcements in the media you will miss the boat. And while we had this media attentaion the days before, in Delhi this failed. Even an presentation in the Pressclub of Indian Journalists didn’t help. So our next week is what we more we looking out for. A few days rest, no tough schedule. Our team got reduced due to upfront made decisions and what did we do: have exhibitions. First we went to Agra. First time in India; wqe must see Taj Mahal. Meanwhile we had a funny exhibition and presentation with the crew of Dragonman and it’s audience: tourists with adventurous mindset. In the very early morning we did an appropriate serious persentation. The electionresult is the proof.

Bal Ashhram, Virat Nagar, Radjastan

During our travel south we passed a place I had in mind to visit for three years. The place is called Bal Ashram, set up by Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a transitory rehabilitational educational development center for freed bonded child labourers. Having an excellent presentation, with remarks of the kids that goes beyond the power of our participating artists and doing a workshop gave us the great opportunity to change 75 paintings with paintings from children of three schools of the Oirschot region. Big fun, very welcome and great kids. Presentations for ‘a different kind of audience’ is quite nessecary in my situation.
We’re now preparing possibilities to keep these contacts longer functioning.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat

We’re up to Ahmedabad. Our stomach is acting weird and our next week of program is already waiting. The last week before we will arrive in Pune, our main destination of our journey. We Visit Puskar and Udajpur, but just briefly. And we keep on wondering about the traffiic jam that can be created and solved, every second again. But it’s a kind of weird. The priority is: first use your horn, secondly you stear without hitting another. Third: start engine.
I hope they smile to each other as much as they do to me. Having a position pretty high, due to the fact our truck is quite a serious truck, we do not mind too much. We’re too big to be pushed aside. Except by busses. They go anywhere, anyhow, anyway.

In Ahmedabad we’re back in one of those province towns with over 3 milion people. The Kanoria Art Center is very welcome to us. Although it is 40 degrees and our fyzical condition is not perfect, we install a nice exhibition and gave a dozen of storytelling performances to up to 250 people, including 70 children, 20 artists in residence of the Art Faculty (on that same premisses) and quite some Dutch people. The first Dutch representative responds to our call and supports us widely in the small amount of time that we offer. Very nice, Miss Gauri Wagener!
We indeed give people a little of time. Sometimes it feels like a Rock & Roll tour. Two three days in a city, and up to the next. However... the summer started and the schoolholidays started. The exhibition in Vadorada is cancelled due to this fact. Pity, because Baroda (as they also call it) is a very gently, quite city with only half a million people and a superb Art academy.

Nashik, Maharashtra

At the end of our travel to our main stop in Puna we have an exhibition in Nashik. I look forward to that, becaus ealready for 8 month there is an official panel in nashik. Last year we got an email of a Nashuik painter who read about our project on the internet and applied for participation. So we have send him an email. This artist, Dhananjay Goverdhane turns out to be a fine painter, a very nice man and above all a great stooryteller. We have quite some audience on this one day presentation and a large amount of them do not speak english. We use translators regularly, but this is it. Normaly we speak short sentences and give the translator time to make his interpertation. Not Dhananjay. He listens to the complete story, looks at the expressions on my face and takes a good notice of of jokes and nuances. Then, when the story is finished he starts. Looking at the reactions from the audience Dhananjay uses the same forms of communications. I invite him to come on tour with us next time we will be in India. It turns out to be there are more similarities. he was a performning actor, he is autodidact and he loves to interact with the audience. Also thanks to his work in getting press announcements and support with renting the space, the Nashik exhibition became on of the finest in India. And there were already quite a lot of great exhibitions.

New selection

What we have been doing all the way, and specially since we are in India, is inviting Indian artists to make a painting on a panel. Dhananjay was a good example. Next update in Pune we will spend extra attention to this part of our project.