terra incognita
The absurd offers one way of making sense of this world.
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I have recently begun working on a project and even in its earliest stages it feels like a turning point in my work. It’s a different approach and it feels more freeing.
In the beginning there is free-play, a pure-creative state, governed by the act of doing-the making, yet untouched by the forces of commodity culture that beg for labels. Eventually the form, forms for itself a frame of reference or attaches to a context within which it is created. This becomes crucial for communicating about the work (the form), whether it’s social media, an in-person conversation or a blog-post here on my website, the work cannot exist by itself, it owes an explanation, to me and to the viewer. And even though, conceptually it’s one endless flow for me, where previous work feeds future work, in a general commercial-setting, the journey of that work ends, when it’s sold.
This new project, changes that order. It feels as though for the first time, the conceptual threads of my work will define the journey and, not a point of sale. If only you knew how liberating that can feel for an artist, you would understand the tingling sensation in my hands. This time, the objects I create won’t stand alone or be interpreted on a plinth or a wall. They will exist inside the performance, as part of the movement, objects the performer will move with or inhabit. Their meaning will arise not from their tiles, but from what unfolds between the performer, the object, and the audience in real time.
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“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We (the performer & I) imagine them as entities of a parallel world; forms that evoke the organic, the archaic, the celestial; not very far from the play-field where my mind generally hangs. As of now, their meaning lives precisely in their obscurity, their ambiguity, their ability to hold multiple, layered associations without collapsing into a single, fixed identity. Perhaps they would resemble a seed, a womb, a fossil, a limb, a fragment of an ancient tool, or a weapon. Just putting it all out there! They’re familiar and alien at once, something you almost recognize but can’t quite name, artifacts from a world that exists only in the imagination, and slowly materialising.
There are certain constraints that differ from the usual parameters that guide my work. The objects will have to be built within the curves and crevices of the human body in mind, as well as the movements of the performance. This will be an iterative process as I imagine to arrive at the forms by observing her movements and she expands the performance by incorporating the works. I have to create works that are not too heavy, so the dancer can move without restraint. But at the same time, these objects must be sturdy and not fragile. This tension also plays out visually. While the objects may appear fluid and organic, they will be made of ceramic; hard, delicate, fragile and those forceful, expressive movements will constantly brush up against the risk of shattering. I think this fragile-hard tension, and the interplay between vulnerability and strength, is going to really make sense once we have first choreography.
Another aspect is sound, it is super integral to this performance, and thus the forms need to enable the artist to generate sound through movement. I am thinking ancient sound-making objects like whistles, flutes, drums.
At this point, I’m thinking about many things, from my recent trip to France, visiting these limestone caves that felt like laparoscopic view of Gaia itself, this absurd painting of an animal made up of many other animals, I saw at a museum in Ahmedabad, India. Beyond that, the works of Hieronymus Bosch come up, the scientific-intimacy of Ernst Haeckel’s illustrations, the strong, emotional-form photography of plants of Karl Blossfeldt, and of course, some animations like Scavengers Reign and Fantastic Planet.
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I find myself occupied in a routinely activity, of physical & mental states of world-building, in a world that always appears to be breaking. I wonder if this my way out or way in.
tbc..