A collaborative space
: gatherings :
: in-progress :
: simultaneously :
: at-the-onset-of :
: coming-together :
first draft –— is a collective of five artist-friends — Sonam Chaturvedi, Akshay Sethi, Anarya, Priyesh Gothwal, Priyank Gothwal — to create situations of coming together that we call ‘gatherings’, and building a commons– akin to a porch where people sit, converse, evolve, gestate, share and build relations slowly over time. It was initiated in 2018 in Delhi, India, as a series of pop-up shows that later evolved into ‘gatherings’ in response to the pandemic and its isolation. The process behind ‘drafts’ becomes essential in creating a playful space to invite a flux of dialogues, mistakes, accidents, revisions, provocations, and so forth.
A gathering is a space to share, eat, play, think, embrace commonalities as well as differences, and build difficult solidarities over time. It offers a space to rest and recuperate together without the compulsion to produce something/serve an agenda, as propagated by individualised capitalist structures of art making and dissemination. The relationalities amongst the gatherers and their intimacies take the centre-stage; it manifests through a prompt to lubricate the conversations and the spatial energies.
There have been 4 pop-up shows and 25 gatherings at various locations in India and outside, held at / in collaboration with FICA India, Asia Art Archive in India, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Kaalo.101 (Kathmandu), Watermans Art Centre (London), Temporary Unit (Singapore), Body Embedding Residency (Vienna), and with various artist-friends. first draft is also the Indian collaborator in creating the South Asian Playground with artist-run independent spaces in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
The gatherings include collaborations with the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), Asia Art Archive in India (AAA), Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, -out-of-line- collaborative, and Watermans Art Centre (London), and have been articulated by the group at Performance Research journal by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis. The members include Akshay Sethi, Anarya, Priyesh Gothwal, Priyank Gothwal, Sonam Chaturvedi, practising artists and educators based in Delhi
: We started in February, 2018 with the first iteration at NIV Art Centre, Delhi, with a group of five artists- Tatjana Henderieckx, Charlot Van Geert, Priyesh Gothwal, Priyank Gothwal and Sonam. Each displaying their preliminary ideas, like rough sketches that they planned to work on further (/not). This exercise served as a ground to play and explore the effects and potential an idea holds when it’s materialised, derived from the conversations with peers and the audience.
: The second iteration also took place before the pandemic, in July, 2019, at terrace/6464 in Vasantkunj, Delhi, with works by Sonam, Priyank Gothwal, Priyesh Gothwal, Divya Singh, Suvani Suri and Neeraj Patel.
: The third pop-up in 2023 was by Akshay Sethi, Anarya, Sumedha, Priyesh Gothwal, Priyank Gothwal and Sonam, at terrace/6464 in Delhi.
Some images from the second pop-up show:
In the ongoing interventions as first draft gatherings, a pre-decided prompt is given to the participants that becomes a lubricant to carry the conversations and build shared energies and intimacies, like bring an object, page, sound/video clip, anecdotes/references on ‘walking’, ‘time-difference’, ‘callscapes’, ‘city as space’, ‘relation to the night-sky’, ‘immobility’, ‘gift-economy’ and others.
The conversations could sprout into more connections and extensions, whereby we don’t necessarily create, yet being open to any residual form that is left behind and/or taken forward- as collaborations, artworks, writings, whatsapp groups, recipes, plants, a walk, and so forth.
Visit here to check about the ongoing gatherings and pop-up shows.
Refer to the portfolio/previous works for a comprehensive documentation of first draft’s practice.