Bhoomi Habba

The Festival of Justpeace. Celebrate earth, celebrate life. This is the name of the festival that happened at Visthar, the festival that the SOP participants, myself and Visthar staff have worked extremely hard on.   This happened yesterday at the campus and, in my opinion, was a great success. 2000+ people from around Bangalore and India turned up to see what was happening. Our exhibition demonstrated issues from around South East Asia, issues we have been talking about, issues some of my fellow participants have experienced firsthand. A truly humbling experience to help them raise awareness of these issues in an artistic form. Lots of things were going on with a specific focus on nuclear energy and the dangers it presents people. This is an issue that is very topical at the moment in India as local people in Koodankulam fight against large companies and the Indian Government to prevent the opening of a plant that will affect them so greatly that they will have to leave their homes in order to survive. There were many honoured guests including survivors of Agent Orange from Viet Nam (if you don’t know what this is, I strongly recommend you google it and take the time to read the information!). There was a lot of stress leading up to the event with us all very busy helping to bring the whole thing together; our eviction house got evicted from its original spot, our displacement instillation got displaced and our mining instillation got shoved to a different spot. The irony was kinda funny after the stress! Now, instead of talking a lot about it, here are some photos to show the fun that we have had;

 Erica adding some of the finishing touches to her art instillation.

 Our Classroom view, the tree in the middle was bought to life by people's dreams and ideas for the future written on leaves.

 Erica's caption on the bottom, the theme of the festival

 The start, parade from the gate to the inauguration site. Lots of drums and noise! Great fun.

 Phally, June, Noy's back and Small, waiting to start! They served some FAB Thai, Cambodian and Lao food! Thanks guys.

The Peace well at the end of the day lite up by candles going down the steps with the Bandhavi girls in the bottom singing songs. Beautiful, now just to find a way to get rid of the itchy mosquito bites!

If you want to know more, there should be some information about the day on Visthars website; www.visthar.org 

And to end, I would like to say thank you to everyone's hard work that made this day so exciting and fun for all to enjoy. We rocked it guys!