Little Boxes

 

1

Animation: Disposable House 1 (Little Boxes)

Animation by: Samudra Kajal Saikia

Done on: 25^th January 2011

While working and researching on the theme: The Imagery of House in Individual and Collective Memories, the song “little Boxes” inevitably came to our mind.

The profundity of the satire is attested by a professor at the University of Miami,"I've been lecturing my classes about middle-class conformity for a whole semester. Here's a song that says it all in 1½ minutes."

Earlier we have used the song in an earlier performance of Kankhowa: GHAR KATHA, Chapter One, in the 75^th anniversary celebration of Baroda Ameteur Dramatic Club, 28^th August 2010. 

The performance was designed into seven different sectors. The Prologue takes place at the outside of the auditorium of Shreyas High School, Manjalpur, Baroda. The first Sector: The Narcissist Actor, takes place at the threshold of the auditorium. 

As the performers and the spectators enter into the main hall, after breaking down a “wall”, the second sector: Little Boxes takes place.

There is an installation with little box like houses made up of origami and a mosquito net lit up with translucent light. Two performers are inside the net with hanging origami houses and a singer sings a country song once popularized by Pete Seeger: “little boxes made of ticky tacky”…

Simultaneously two other performers drags, pulls and pushes a cluster of card-board houses towards the stage through the hall.

Performers of this part of performance:

Udita Bhattacharya, St. Stephens College, University of Delhi

Diya Sen and Thomas, Faculty of Arts, M S University

Abhimanyu Mishra, Ahmadabad

Sebastien Merges, Esban, France

2 

"Little Boxes" is a song written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963. The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It refers to suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky", and which "all look just the same." "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material used in the construction of housing of that time.

Pete Seeger's rendition of the song is known internationally, and reached number 70 in the Billboard Hot 100; Seeger was a friend of Reynolds, also a political activist, and like many others in the 1960s he used folk songs as a medium for protest.

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes)

Watch Pete Peeger in this link:

 

FICA is pleased to announce the recipient of Public Art Grant 2010 Samudra Kajal Saikia – "Apna hi Ghar Samjho: Mobilising the House"

Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the recipient of the Public Art Grant 2010, Samudra Kajal Saikia. The grant will support Saikia’s proposed project titled “Apna hi Ghar Samjho: Mobilizing the House”, a performance-based mobile public art project, which will finally be located/performed in Guwahati, Assam, in September 2011. This project is a part of a larger multimedia-performance initiative by Saikia on the “Imagery of Ghar”. The Public Art Grant 2010 jury consisted of Vivan Sundaram, Ravi Agarwal and Jeebesh Bagchi.

Through the act of ‘construction’ and ‘procession’ of a Ghar (house/home) the project will primarily set up a dialogue with the local public and bring together a community of artists to deliberate upon the idea of Ghar, as not only a physical entity but also as emotional, sentimental and romantic constructions within each individual. The performance/procession will address the idea of dislocation and exile, a very prevalent contemporary phenomenon, by literally removing the Ghar from its initial location and taking it on the road - almost like a “cultural procession”.

The project seeks to deal with critical issues related to performer-spectator relationships, and the consequent paradigm shift that occurs with changed contexts where these relationships are played out. To Saikia, this problem of “shifting spaces” is one that is a part of contemporary reality. What happens to a rural spectator when s/he enters to an urban auditorium? What happens to a performer while entering an arena of visual art practice? How do these shifts - language shift, formal shift, paradigm shift – operate/affect the role of an actor and the spectator? How long does one remain an outsider or alien to a comparatively new art practice and through which process does s/he become an insider? Or, on the other hand, at what a juncture does an insider start feeling alienated? Through this experimental project, Saikia will explore the homogenising circumstances that allows for the exchange to experiences between the performer and the spectator, while addressing this continuous inside-outside conundrum.

Samudra Kajal Saikia is a performer, writer and art historian, who has been involved in several theatrical performances with amateur artists/performers since his graduate days. Saikia completed his BA in Art History from Kalabhavan, Santiniketan in 2005 and MA in Art History from Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University of Baroda in 2007. As a writer focused on cultural criticism, he has contributed to several North-East Indian publications since 1995. Saikia has had brief stints as researcher at NID-Ahmedabad and as visiting faculty at Delhi College of Art, and is now fully engaged in his work as Founder-Creative Director of Kathputhlee Animation Studio, New Delhi in which he started working in 2007. Through the initiative of “Kankhowa – working with interfaces”, a national performance-cum-research group, Saikia has developed and works with a theatrical form termed ‘The Disposable Theatre’, which comes from a multi-disciplinary paradigm.

For further information about FICA and its programmes visit www.ficart.org.

The Chairs: The Private and the Public, Kalabhavan, Santiniketan, March 2008.

 FOUNDATION FOR INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART
D-178 Okhla Phase 1, First Floor, New Delhi 110020, India
E info@ficart.org | W www.ficart.org

FICA READING ROOM
D-42, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110024