Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 121

Imagine All the People
Shubham Roy Choudhury
Shubham Roy Choudhury works at the India Foundation for the Arts as Programme Executive, Arts
Practice developing and monitoring arts projects. Additionally, he leads the IFA archive project. He
has a Masters degree in Film Studies from Jadavpur University and Research Training Programme
from Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. He has worked with the Department of Film
Studies, The Media Lab and the School of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University,
in various capacities. He has taught film & media studies in educational institutes in India and
Bangladesh. Shubham has worked with television channels and ad agencies. He has been closely
associated to TENT art space and has acted in a few films. He has contributed to a number of books,
journals and newspapers. He has special interest in archiving, sound studies, cinema and new media
technology.
The year ���� marks the �� th anniversary of the Edinburgh International
Festival. Over the years the festivals have created a unique history in
celebrating a multiplicity of voices in the arts. In ����, Brexit has come into
effect and USA faces unprecedented political turmoil at the highest level.
The year also marks the �� th year of Indian independence from the British,
during which India’s government is engaged in destroying our multicultural
ethos and has lost basic empathy for its citizens.
We are at an important juncture in human history. We live in a time where
we are continuously bombarded with information, but we are grappling to
make sense of the world around us. We live in bubbles that we have created
and we are complacent listening only to the voices with which we agree. As
a result the world is a much polarized place today.
It is difficult to grasp that we are a species capable of interplanetary travel,
but incapable of providing food to every individual. We have superior
communications technology, but we are unwilling to listen to each other.
Now more than ever we need to listen to the voices of our fellow beings
and try to understand their point of view. In his book
Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan (����) describes a photograph
of Earth taken by Apollo �� astronauts from space. Sagan
writes, “We are too small and our statecraft is too feeble
to be seen by a spacecraft between the Earth and the
Moon. From this vantage point, our obsession with
nationalism is nowhere in evidence.” The arts already
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