Film Industry: The global phenomenon that is set to redefine the way Indians shop, eat out, and amuse

The global phenomenon that is set to redefine the way Indians shop, eat out, and amuse

    POP-UP — it’s a word you’ll be hearing a lot this year. And it will prefix everything from restaurants, concerts, galleries, houses, salons, libraries, even cities.
To put it simply, popups are micro-events that are put up at temporary venues, where people collect as many experiences as possible. So, instead of visiting a shop, you attend a flea market at someone’s garage, set up for a day or two; or a rock concert in a shopping mall’s parking lot; an art festival at a park or pavement where both artists and aficionados get their fix; or a gourmet brunch for a small group at a friend’s place, where a qualified chef opens your tastebuds to a new cuisine, for a fixed amount. The impermanent nature of pop-ups means there are no real overhead or utilities, and little cost and labour, yet the choices and innovative events keep culture enthusiasts on their toes.
Temporary worlds Every Sunday, for the last two months, longtime friends and party throwers Nandini Sood and chef Anupama Bhat have been hosting Goma pop-up restaurants-for-a-day in Delhi and Gurgaon. The setting is usually a friend’s living room or terrace, the furniture minimalistic, the list of invitees doesn’t exceed 20, and the menu is a mix of Japanese and Korean delicacies. The hosts interact with guests beforehand and make sure they put like-minded people on the same table.
    “The beauty of our pop-up is that there are no waiters, we attend to tables personally, introduce each and every dish on the menu and welcome spontaneous feedback after the meal!” says Bhat.
    India has seen a surge of pop-up events in the last few months — from three-day pop-up shops held in Bangalore and Kolkata by luxury fashion portal Squarekey, to the day-long confluence of music, live art, graffiti, robots and alternate reality games called ‘Museum of Memories’ in Mumbai. Miko Kuro Midnight Tea Party — an international 12-hour experiment inspired by the intricate rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony — came to India last month. It featured installations, poetry and performances.
    December 2012 also saw Mumbai hosting a five-weekend pop-up festival called We Love Bandra. It had multiple temporary venues in unusual places such as a gallery, a quaint cottage and a tattoo studio. Visitors witnessed DJ performances (Karsh Kale), Odissi and Kathak dance, live music, while shopping for limited edition designs of inimitable labels. “Pop-ups have an element of
novelty; they are transient and have deadlines, so people do show up. Also, unlike mainstream art, pop-up events are more democratic and inclusive,” says Namrata Bhawnani, director, Visual Disobedience, an artist collective behind some of these pop-up gigs.
Recession-ready The economic downturn has added fuel to the popularity of pop-ups as businesses, and individuals look at different ways to generate income without great capital outlay. Pop-ups have substituted the notion of shabby and makeshift with creativity and an element of chic. An international roving art outfit called No Man’s Art Gallery, which was in India recently, puts up week-long art galleries in different cities. It exhibits talented local artists, alongside the ones discovered in the previous cities the gallery popped-up in. This is a great scenario in times of cutbacks on culture, where many young artists are being denied the possibility to pursue art as a profession.
Deep-rooted beginnings While the term ‘pop-up’ might be fairly new, it has echoes in everything from the restaurants traditionally run in people’s homes in Cuba (Case de Cuba), to the shop that artists Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin opened in London for six months in 1993 where they made and sold mugs, T-shirts and ashtrays, to artist Dan Thompson’s gallery inside a bakery, in Worthing, UK. Pop-up retail started as a rogue concept by edgy brands like Vacant, which opened different temporary stores in 1999.
Relevant today Concedes Emmelie Koster, the founder of No Man’s Art, “The generation that I come from (25 to 30 year-olds) gets distracted easily. We have a short attention span, so we present art in a form that reflects that sentiment. It adds to the ‘this is happening right now,’ atmosphere.” In her book, The Pop-Up Generation: Design Between Dimensions, Dutch trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort examines the pop-up phenomenon that captures the essence of the times we live in. “Young people easily shift between 2D and 3D, barely noticing a difference. Navigating this no man’s land, the new ‘pop-up generation’ of designers create work that is malleable, transient, and ever-changing.”
    From diners and shoppers looking for new excitement, artists and fashion designers teaming up, to brands looking to add a bit of ‘cool’ to their fixed stores, everyone is in on pop-ups.
WHAT’S POP-UP CULTURE ALL ABOUT? Pop-ups are micro-events that are put up at temporary venues, for a few hours to a few weeks, where people collect as many experiences as possible. It can be art galleries, cultural festivals, flea markets, music gigs or even a gourmet meal...