Serendipity Arts Festival is back this year, leaner and stronger: Hero's Sunil Munjal

Held in Panaji, Goa every year Serendipity Arts Festival is the brainchild of Hero Enterprise Chairman, Sunil Kant Munjal. Founded in 2016, the festival was disrupted by the pandemic – though it survived through its virtual avatar. This year, Serendipity is back in its fifth physical form. And there’s a promise of excitement too! Munjal shared some insights into this year’s festival with Business Today. Excerpts: 

BT: The Serendipity Arts Festival is back. During the pandemic, the world understood the value of art – so how has the pandemic changed the festival?

Sunil Munjal: We introduced the festival to bring back arts and culture to the public domain and into public conversations, and there is nothing more public and conversational today than the internet. During the pandemic, we took all the strengths and learnings of the physical festival developed over four editions and transplanted them to the virtual world. In the process, we created one of the world’s first internet-ready festivals, making it as contextual and site-specific as possible. Now, as we are returning for the fifth physical edition of the festival, we are taking our gleanings from the virtual world back to the physical. So, for the 2022 physical edition, you can expect a considerable amount of hybridity between technology and art.

BT: What are the major attractions for the Serendipity Arts Festival this year? 

Sunil Munjal: While it would be difficult to single out just a few from so many interesting events, let me mention three stellar exhibitions at the Old GMC Complex: Terra Nullius: Excavations from Image 3.0 in collaboration with Cnap, Paris, Somewhere Ethereal, and India by Book in the 21st Century curated by Pramod Kumar KG—these will examine interdisciplinarity. Then there is Veerangana Solanki’s Future Landing: The Arcade, a virtual project that we are bringing to the physical space. Amitesh Grover’s site-specific production of The Money Opera is something we are quite excited about. As a practice, we have developed sites that aren’t usually used for the arts, yet this theatre piece seamlessly blends into the building where it is being performed.

BT: The NFT space has been a boon for some artists, but will digital art entirely disrupt traditional artforms? 

Sunil Munjal: Both traditional and digital forms complement and feed off each other. Technology has accelerated in our lives due to COVID-19; at the same time, it has also significantly increased the reach of the arts. NFTs are especially effective for provenance building and experimentation, and I am sure this form will develop and play an important role in the arts in the future. We have an exhibition this year at the Old GMC Complex titled “Somewhere Ethereal”; it is a group show of six artists presenting NFT artworks that were first shown at Fotografiska, Stockholm. Each artwork encapsulates a parallel digital universe, creating a fully immersive experience.

BT: This is the fifth physical edition of the festival. What plans do you have for the growth and expansion of the festival. 

Sunil Munjal: As I said, we wish to bring arts into the public domain in meaningful, effective, and impactful ways; hopefully, some of these efforts will seed a movement for the arts. While seeking to bring the best of the arts at every edition of the festival, we also intend to nurture and develop a new generation of art managers who are go-getters, innovative, and possess open minds. Arts can only prosper and evolve when people with the right chutzpah and attitude are carrying the torch. We are also hoping to travel to more cities and take portions of the festival overseas. We also hope to strengthen our sustainability initiatives by finding ways to work with a lower carbon footprint design with an emphasis on recycling and reuse. Arts production is another aspect we would like to develop, and we are priming ourselves to become an incubator for supporting and commissioning alternative, innovative practices in the arts while also exploring the overlaps in our history, present, and future.

BT: How much impetus should art and art awareness and education be given in a country like India? 

Sunil Munjal: To begin with, every school and college should have an arts curriculum; this would help in two ways. First, it would aid design thinking, and second, it would help students formulate their thoughts beyond words. Design thinking and artistic thinking become especially relevant in the digital age, where communication is seamlessly occurring between words, gestures, and images. Art is a universal language that can be understood and spoken through emotions. 

BT: What is the key purpose of Serendipity Arts today and what would it be in times to come? 

Sunil Munjal: Our purpose is, and will always be, to find interesting and imaginative ways that capture the diversity of the arts and culture from the region and bring it to the public realm. Our purpose is also to create conversations around the virtuous circle that the arts can create, and the impact that it can have on an economy, the education system, and on society. We will continue to invest time, energy, and resources into this as we move ahead.

(The Serendipty Arts Festival 2022 will be hosted in Goa, India between December 15-23).