With a strong multicultural theme – Indian heart, Australian heartbeat, this web-series focuses on Australians of Indian heritage and how they proudly represent a fine blend of the two distinct cultures… the fourteen episodes of the series highlight the protagonist’s journey from India to Australia (or vice-versa), their struggle and success, and how they meld their own culture with local mores. The aim of the series is to celebrate diversity and to create awareness about the Australian Indians and their approach towards adapting to a new life in multi-cultural Australia. Each episode ends with the question - what makes them an Australian-Indian?
Research statement
With a strong multicultural theme – Indian heart, Australian heartbeat, this web-series focuses on Australians of Indian heritage and how they proudly represent a fine blend of the two distinct culture… the fourteen episodes of the series highlight the protagonist’s journey from India to Australia (or vice-versa), their struggle and success, and how they meld their own culture with local mores. The aim of the series is to celebrate diversity and to create awareness about the Australian Indians and their approach towards adapting to a new life in multi-cultural Australia. Each episode ends with the question - what makes them an Australian-Indian?
This project works around such concepts as ‘global cultural flows,’ ‘deterritorialization’, ‘imagination’, and the diasporic public sphere. For this, I invoke and utilise the theory of ‘global cultural flow’ as proposed by Arjun Appadurai in his seminal work “Modernity at Large” (1996), to examine the impact of the diasporic culture and ‘desires’, in context of the dreams, aspirations, and fantasy, fuelled by their global movement.
The interplay that works between imagination, fantasy, and nostalgia can be seen in various stories that are featured in this short-documentary style web-series. The nostalgia factor keeps the protagonist rooted in their own culture, but their imagination and fantasies of a new life in a new country and environment bring in the elements of adaptability, renewability, and determination to make everything work out in their favour, even if it takes time.
This web-series paves way for further research and discussion on the Indian diaspora in Australia; their struggle and success and most importantly, how they negotiate between the two cultures.