It’s in their nature: Artists hold event for environment

Can artists succeed where activists have failed? Environmentalists and animals rights activists have not got very far with opposing development projects such as the Ken-Betwa river-linking project which threaten to damage ecologically-sensitive areas, but a unique theatre project held in the capital this weekend tried to see whether art could work any better.

This was a staged‘mock trial’ named ‘Landscape as Evidence: Artist as Witness’ with participation by ‘real’lawyers – Norma Alvares and Anand Grover – and a ‘real’, albeit retired, judge – Justice Yatindra Singh, the former Chief Justice of Chattisgarh High Court. The ‘witnesses’ were artists Navjot Altaf, Ravi Agarwal and Sheba Chhachhi who presented ‘evidence’in the form of artworks which were examined and cross-examined by the lawyers .