Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata 2021

Alex May was selected for the fourth edition of the Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata 2021, an interdisciplinary residency organised by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, Alliance Française du Bengale with Institut français en Inde, the British Council, Kolkata, and the Consolato Generale d’Italia in Kolkata, in collaboration with CIMA and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in New Delhi.

Because of the pandemic, the 2021 edition moved onto a specially designed digital platform rather than taking place physically in Kolkata. The programme was structured to preserve the residency’s emphasis on cultural exchange, immersion in the city, and dialogue between local and international artists, while rethinking those experiences through remote participation. Alex was selected alongside Irma Blumstock, Chloé Macary-Carney, Marta Roberti, and Anushree Ghosh.

This residency became the framework for A Kolkata, and that context is crucial to the work. The project’s digital structure did not simply replace travel; it shaped the work’s central questions about distance, mediation, and how a city can be encountered through other people’s routes, images, and forms of attention. In that sense, the residency sits directly inside May’s wider practice rather than outside it as background research.