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

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

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

Agra, Uttar Pradesh
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
Election fun with 100 kids and 10 people staff:

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

Nashik, Maharashtra
Election on emotional base.

Bangalore, Karnataka
2 days of exhibition at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
190 visitors, 116 votes, 45 paintings in vote

Goa
2 days presentation at the Kelkar Art Complex
slack season, few visitors, great party
46 paintings in vote and 29 votes

Puna, Vaishwik Art Environment
Results of one month exhibition at Vaishwik Art Environment. from 84 till 149 paintings in vote. 189 votes.

GRAND OPENING World in India
4 most respected paitings

Meanwhile in Puna also having a street presentation and school presentations:

MG Road Walking Plaza 08-06-08 with 38 paintings

Dr. Kalmari Shamarao Highschool
12 classes appeared. 515 votes for 50 paintings

Mumbai Podar International school
Presentations for 5 large groups and several smaller goups. Over 500 votes for 58 paintings:

6. Program in the Middle East
Exhibitions in Dubai, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (t.b.c.)

7. Program in Istanbul
second view

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

India update 4: Getting India all the way

Team to the South: Martin, Abhay, Dilip and Pandu

building up at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore

Mr H.N. Suresh and his painting

recording for the local TV

The slogan of the institute

Getting there and back at A1, 24 hours restaurant

With Subodh Kelkar in Goa

At Kelkar Art Complex, Calangute, Goa

Salvador Fernandes, participating artist

Back on the streets of Pune

Dr Kalmari Shamarao Highschool in Pune

Organizers and participants at the Grand Opening of 'The World in India' at Vaishwik Art environment in Pune

Kids doing organized voting after one of the 7 storytelling sessions of 35 minutes at the Podar World School in Mumbai.

get the last upadte: going home

India update 4: Getting India all the way

After our retreat in Pune, where we stayed almost 2 weeks we have a small trip to the south. Hydrabad was cancelled, because the Art academy is on holiday. We knew this for some time so we went to Bangalore. On Invitation of Mr. Suresh, whose paintings we have seen in Chandigarh, we have a two days exhibition in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan institute. One of the oldest educational institutes of India. They have this slogan: let noble thoughts come to us from all sides. Excellent. A high professional institute with a great staff and friendly cooperators, that supported us all the way. The first day had a press conference and we had a crowd with great variety. Second day many perants with children showed up due to the fact that all newspapers mentioned this exhibition was a great event for children. In fact I like the idea of teaching young and old people. about 8 storytelling presentations were given to the audience and the painting of Mr. Surech became the ultimate winner of the voting fun system. I guess he has a lot of friends. Besides that he also made an excellent painting about Matangi, the goddess of Hope. Protecting all hope we carry.

During these days we also had two TV interviews broadcasted at the 8 o'clock news and there were 7 newspapers reporting about our show.

But we were on the road again. And we're going north again, to Goa. Tourist place pur sang. But we will meet this small Indian state at the slack season. The rainy season is about to start and tourists are gone. This gives us the opportunity to meet the local people. This is still an international affair since Goa is a center of people from all over the world.
At the Kelkar Art Complex we have a modest exhibition. Only about 40 people show up including two TV programs but we have a great time because the story telling performance is really surprising everybody. In this place we got the advise to stop presenting us as a great exhibition. "The exhibition is not particularly ethically special", as was said. "It is nice. But your story telling performance is really special. So focus on that." We might take that advise seriously.
We have received three paintings in Goa, of which one of the youngest participant in our project. Siddart Kelkar is only 12 years old, made a great painting and wrote on the back: Hope to see you again. Ciao little big friend. You're fabulous.

Unfortunately the presentation on friday at the Little Flower school was cancelled due to the rain. Sorry for that Els... The idea was good.

There are great articles about these shows at our press2008 site. Just click here.

Our last visit in this small southern tour was Kolhapur. However. Due to circomstances the organization only received our information two days before presentation. We have decided no to build up and spend loads of energy, for an audience that is not aware of the fact the program is taking place. We had a nice tour with our host and saw the local castle and museum and went back to Puna. The next day an open air show takes place, if the weather allows us to do so. Then two days of, three days school presentations and the last day in Pune. This last day might be a major day since we have invited all the participating artists in India, which is now almost 70.

And indeed the weather allowed us to present at MG Road. Great to have so many people completely surprised. There was one girl that surprised me even more. She is from Teheran and saw our show in the House of Artist in Teheran. Now she was here on the streets in Puna. How small the world can get??? Funny thing was... how to recognize her? In Teheran she was completely in black. Here she walked around like a modern young woman.

Continuing being in Pune, waiting for our final goodbye exhibition on Saturday 14th, we had some extra presentations at the Dr. Kalmari Shamarao Highschool. A 2 days presentation that started with the idea to have one presentation for the staff, one for the children and one for the perants. But as usual, plans change. The staff was there, I guess there have been some perants. But above all there were a lot of students. Up to 500 students have visited and voted during 7 sessions. Marvelous audience since, as you might know, children in India are more disciplined as in Europe. So they took a good care, we did not have to shout and finally got nice reactions. Marvelous to be in such a position. I like this very much.

And finally we had our Grand Opening (or actually our Grand Closure) at The Vaishwik Art Envionment in Puna. Altough 10 kilometers away from the center of the city and the ongoing rain at this time of the year, the last day of exhibition was visited by quite a lot of people. Many of them artists that came to say goodbye. We have calculated over 400 visiters of the complete Vaishwik Exhibition. In our humble opinion that was quite good.

But that turned out not to be finally. In Eindhoven, our hometown, we have met the dirctor of the Stedelijk College. This school, that also manages the esecond internatinal school in Eindhoven was said to be in contact with the Pdas International school in Mumbai. So we contacted them and they said we were welcome to have half day presentation. This presentation is our last presentation in India. And it was quite a succes, if we can call it that way. Five presentations have been given to groups between 75 and 90 children. It was quite amazing. The staff showed up more and more in quantity. The complete day was just great. Having so many children, adults and myself being enthousiastic is just a fine result. We will go back to Netehrlands and show this results to the Stedelijk collega and will ask them the make a similar succes. The link to our hometown is most importent. If there wasn't any it would change us from travellers into wonderers, refugees of emigrants. Couln't be better. Thanks to Vandana and her staff. Thank you so much.

Altogether in complete India over 4000 people have seen our exhibition and participated by voting or just came to visit. That is quite good for a first visit in this country. We have done 16 presentations in 12 cities.
We have generated 21 articles in newspapers, in that sense, articles that is more then just an announcement. 5 times we have been on local TV. Local... that is to say national statewide, but not countrywide (India is made out of 28 states, if I'm correct).
79 artists have accepted our invitation to paticipate and have made a panel. Combined these artists form the 2008 selection "The World in India".

We are most happy with this result. This was our first introduction in India. It is now time to start working and see if we can come back to present our complete selection nationwide, including presenting a new catalogue. That will be our task for the upcoming month to come.