[Interview with Art Illustrated (ed. Niharika Peri) on Disposable House and Disposable Theatre by Kankhowa (Samudra Kajal saikia); Interview Dated: October, 2015
Essay by: Praveena Shivram]
- I want to start by
asking you about the word you use – Disposable. It is so many things at
the same time – clinical, functional, ephemeral, and somehow, a very
‘middle class’ term. I am curious to know what ‘disposable’ means to you.
How do you define it? And why this particular word?
You are right,
it is 'so many things at the same time' and really difficult to explain in a
line. I do not remember exactly what was the time I was using this word (term)
first and even if I do remember, over the period of time the connotations might
have transformed a lot.
I was a
performer (I do not say myself a Performance Artist) even before I came to the
visual arts. Being a performer, and then gradually involved into researches on
Performance Art, I had to be concern about the ephemeral nature of the things. More
than a decade ago I started executing a one of a kind performance that I called
Disposable Theatre. The central argument behind the method was to claim back the
spatial and ephemeral specificity of the live art. It was a remonstration
against the national, phenomenal and grandiose theatre that used to repeat
itself in many 'shows' or staging(s). If theatre is live how can it be repeated? So I started doing a theatre which used
to destroy its own evidences on the spot and at the momentum. Sometimes I
adopted similar texts, I mean literary texts, twice or more than that, but in
the process of doing it eventually was altered itself according to the given
space. By the process the performance was privileged over the written text. Thus
the Disposable Theatre tends to belong in a grey area between experimental
theatre and the Performance Art. The experience and the memory was
prioritized before residue and - most
importantly the momentum was honoured by negating a promise of repeating
itself. I think now I have explained why I tried to dispose my theatre.
Then the
ephemeral or un-sustainability took me into another philosophical level. From only
this transient essence I had to think of- the art of performance is different
from other tactile, plastic or thing-arts. Here I do not produce a product,
object or thing, but I transform my very body- where I do inhabit- into art. As
the art is transient, the body itself is another perishable thing. Art is life, and we can have one life at a
time. And we often encounter so many folk and traditional cultural
materials in the theme of dealing with perishable body. So this single word-
'disposable' helped me a lot to make a rebel against the thingification of art, to re-connect with certain traditional
cultural beliefs, and to find out a work-pattern as well.
To add on, while
answering to your queries I am just thinking: is disposable is the opposite to
the sustainable? Here onwards there might open a new window to think upon.
- In the Disposable
House Project, you completely shattered this myth of the ‘house’ and the
‘home’. It felt particularly relevant in today’s times when every second
SMS is an advertisement for purchasing that ‘dream home’. Did you, at any
point during the course of the project, ever feel that urgency of taking
on this concept of how the home has transformed to mean all things
material, where even purchasing the right wall colour can purchase
happiness and contentment? Was this what led to the genesis of the project
itself?
You cracked it.
Spatial experiences has to do a lot of things to my artistic practices. Only
because of that spatial concerns I came out to the promenade theatre from the
proscenium architectural closet. (Here I owe my tribute to Badal Sircar and his
third theatre for drawing my attention to think upon the language of theatre
and to be concern on the live-communication between the actor and the
spectator). Theatre and Performance are part of architectures. In certain
nuanced times, house and home are interchangeably usable, likewise body and
house seems to do the same. In 2000 I came to Santiniketan from a small town in
Assam and witnessed an urbanizing neighbourhood during the five years I was
doing my BFA. Then in Baroda and then in Delhi- the transformation of spaces
caught my eyes. Delhi as a site or space constantly provokes you constructing
high rise buildings and the promotional real-estate strategies. Somehow the
need for a "dream home" is there in everybody's mind. In this
post-globalized state of being it is even more interesting - because we belong
to a constantly shifting space.
I am not pretty
sure about using the word Diaspora
here, but if truth be told we all are in a diasporic state. In fact the one who
is there in the same locality and same inhabitation, - is shifting fast.
To answer your
question, in a way yes it was there in the germination of the project(s). Let
put the matter differently. A performer also needs a community- a community-
beholder of same taste and language. As we need to learn the language of the
audience, we need to train up the audience as well. We cannot work only for a
conceptual or imaginary audience. We need audience physically present out
there- in front of us, in the time of execution, in the time of living the
performance and in the time of death of the performance. We need to speak
literally to the spectator. Now a language has a validity when both the sides
understand the idioms or use the same vocabulary. But what happens when you
shift the space? How do I do my art to a different set of audience who do not
know my language?
When the city is
shifting constantly, can a concrete building be the settlement for my body?
Where the 'dream house' leads you to - when 'dream' itself is a moving
phenomena? This disturbed situations led me to incorporate the idea of theatre,
the language of theatre inside the practice. Sometimes while doing a work, more
than the work - the process of doing it and scenes-behind came forth. Thus, the
'work-in-progress' state of being is more prevalent than a final show.
- This idea of the
‘body’ as the ‘home of the soul’ becomes, I feel, an important metaphor in
both your Disposable Theatre and Disposable House Project. But I feel, the
‘body’ is also the tool through which performance art manifests, anyway.
How conscious are you of this construct – the physicality of our body and
the physicality of ideas as they manifest?
I think, exactly
the same I have stated in the previous stage. At a time you cannot
differentiate house from home since
every tool, element and component demands their contribution to each other. The
concrete wall, a torn cloth, an old piece of news paper or the living human
body with flesh-and-blood claim their own role towards the development of the
concept.
There is a
series of works on the basis of a poem called 'The Body House of an Actor' that extensively deals with the
concept of body as house, and the agony and ecstasy of the role-player performer. As a seminal work of
mine this performance poetry breaks through the division of conceptual and the
materiality.
Here you will
also notice that the concern around 'body' is not very much similar to the
other Performance Artists. Sometimes I also put the body in the centre of the
work, but not akin to the body-centric Performance Artists. The performance
poem 'The Body House of an Actor' was
a monologue. But while executing, there were many "I"s. The self was
celebrated collectively. A major work of Disposable theatre "Ravana
Katha" (2007), a more than 5000 word epic narrative, was the best example
where the self of the character (Ravana) was split into ten personalities.
Where the singular self was completely devastated.
- While watching the
video on the Disposable House Project, I was struck by the quality of
touring from one place to another. Somehow, that journey felt intrinsic to
how that project was perceived; that almost nomadic quality of life so
rigorously shunned by ‘civil society’. Did you, by bringing your project
into the public domain, feel it was a statement meant to inspire thought,
or a spectacle meant to inspire curiosity?
Stating house as
a 'settlement' is a pretension of the 'civil society', you nailed it. This
pretension was a gift of the modernism. The ideas around settlement, identity
and history (whenever you write a history - we are tempted to see it as our history and their history) appeared to be problematic on this very ground. then
started the problems around nation and state. The pseudo- settlement taught us
intolerance towards the nomadic nature of life.
Doing the large
scale parade across the city of Guwahati in the Indian State of Assam,
concurrently some other relevance came forth. The parade was started in a place
named Kahilipara with a semi-ritualistic manner and after moving around the
entire city was ended up in Ujan Bazar Ghat- at the bank of Brahmaputra river.
It was consisting of five - life-sized house
tableau or maquettes moving by themselves like automation through the
busy streets. One house was consisting some sufi elements where they say about
the body-house and the interior-exterior dilemmas of the self conscience. The
second one was a middle class household replicating the Assam-type architecture
with wooden beams. Likewise other houses were from a house of Diaspora, a house
for the body-house-of-an-actor. The materials of the construction were dumped
on the river bank and thus disposed on the day of performance itself. Some
re-usable materials were left for the homeless people - on the site - to take
away.
It was
spectacular, mobilizing a huge crowd and an intervene into the regular everyday
of the town. Assam and the other North East Indian states have been in turmoil
for more than three decades on the issues of immigration causing political and
cultural identity crisis. This phenomenal, performative and visually nosy move
shocked many eye-witnesses in the city.
- Can you tell us a
little bit about how different artists came together to build those
disposable houses? What were the kinds of timelines you were working with?
By nature I love
collective experiences. Almost all of my performative ventures took a shape in
collective supports. In 2002 or 2003 I did some small scale performances in Santiniketan on the theme of house as a tribute to Lalon
Fakir. Then I continued writing poetry, graffiti, book-making, animation,
photo-documentation and theatre works and in 2010 I received the Public Art
Grant from Foundation for Indian contemporary art (FICA) for the Disposable
house project. Since the concept was multifaceted and layered I entitled it as
" Disposable House: imagery of House in individual and collective memories".
Loosely,
sometimes I call the process of instigation a creative curating. I like
making things interdisciplinary in true sense and create an environment where
people from various ground come and work. The best part of this process is -
the process itself becomes a work - vibrant with different energies. During the
one decade time span I did a number of theatrical ventures like Ghar Katha (in Baroda), HouseHOLD (KNMA, India), House-Bearer (Gauhati Artists' Guild), a
major wall painted animation film, Storied
House (with Mahan J Dutta) in Ahmedabad, a number of illustrated books and
other events. All were collaborative and the collaborators share their own
subjective presence in the formation and execution.
In 2012 during
the execution of the public art project Apna
hi Ghar Samjho, along with another likeminded curator and thinker Rahul
Bhattacharya we initiated a public art festival of its kind naming Regional
Art, Performance and Events (R.A.P.E.) 2012
where a number of practitioner came and participated in the events.
Manmeet Devgun, Abha Sheth, Pratul Dash, Mandakini Galore, Anuradha Upadhyay
and many contemporary artists and thinkers joined the process. Shakti Bhatt,
Mahan J Dutta, Kriti Gupta, Akhilesh Arya, Kaustubh Das, Dharitri Boro, Pari
Baishya, Arnab Ghosal and some other artists are there being a part of the disposable ventures time
to time. There are many people more, and they belong to completely diverged
fields and localities.
To initiate the
projects usually I prefer a short timed workshop-based model.
- Was there a specific
meaning and purpose to how the houses were shaped (I imagine they were
built over autos?) and the kinds of artwork it displayed on its outer
walls? And what was inside the houses?
In the project
in Guwahati, there were five houses, to show the collective spirit and to
incorporate the diversified concepts behind the concept. The number five helps
me to conceptualize the dramatic Aristotelian pyramid and also reminded me of
the five elements with which the body is constituted with.
There was a Sufi
house. In the creations of the medieval poets like Kabir, Lalon Fakir, Ajan
Fakir and others we encounter with the 'imagery of House' in various terms. In
the Sahajiya Dehatatwa concept the human body is described as a house or a cage
where the spirit comes and dwells temporarily. The concept of the Urban House
was developed and embodied after the many phases of rapid urbanization and
globalization. It comprises of materialistic dreams, individualistic
aspirations and an experience of the urban everyday life. The Body House of an
Actor was another central to the concept. If the Actor is an artist, unlike
other visual and plastic artists s/he does not produce an 'other' thing-art,
but transforms the very subjective body to an art- object. The body of an actor
is the art to "present", the body is the house - where the actor
inhabits. There was another house for Diaspora/ displacement/ Homelessness etc.
This house raises many issues regarding the sociological and political aspects
of home and homelessness. And the last house is Kankhowa's House (Kankhowa is a
name borrowed from Assamese folklore and used extensively for my performative
ventures): a composite of all the mentioned above. From the imageries of
folklore to the urban contemporary contest, it tries to weave out a complicated
network of the individual and collective memories.
The
constructions were built with help of some artisans in Jyoti Chitraban and
student artists from Govt. College of Art and some students' collectives like
Anga North East. The constructions were attached to tempos and they could move
independently giving an allusion of automation happening on the road-
"See, house moving! House moving!!"
- How much of your own
identity is invested in this project? Is there, for instance, a resonance
with the bhela ghar, built during the harvest festival of Bhogali?
I started
researching around the available materials in the existing cultural tapestry
how the imagery of house and home were being used. The making of a house-shape
with the hay collected from the paddy field when the harvesting is over,
inhabiting one night inside that temporal house having grand feast and then
burning down the house interests me in many ways. Not only because of the
spectacular nature, the feast or the personal memories associated with the
tradition but also for the treating of house as a temporal or momentary inhabit
and thereafter destroying it by burning down to ashes. In Assamese the word
'Bhel' sometimes denotes 'body'. So I easily developed an interest in bringing
a reference of bhelaghar into my
body-house of an Actor project.
To add on, I grew
up in a culturally happening environment, within the family. I liked and enjoyed the collective works in the
traditional arena of my village. In Santiniketan also, I used to be a part of
the collective cultural phenomenon and made use of that collective-ness. Thus, collectivism
is not something that I have adopted recently or consciously. Neither
Performance is a term I encountered only in the art world. I am not at all
bothered of making a lineage from the Dada, Surrealism, Futurism or Avant Garde
to my Art Performances. Neither have I felt the need to borrow any given
vocabulary from Identity politics to confront my identity in my own work. I've
seen how everyone performs togetherness and nurtures the collective
consciousness alongside the subjective presence in my village. Very truly, without
a sense of togetherness I simply cannot think of art.
- How effective do you
think public art projects are in general, especially in a country like
India, where we have such a profusion of colour and culture on an everyday
basis? Do you think these become just another part of our cultural
landscape or do you think they stand out precisely because they are meant
to merge into the ordinariness of life?
Perfect
question. I truly believe public art, community engagement, collective efforts
and performances should take over the art-world, and particularly in India. But
sadly we are used to call them alternatives whereas they are the mainstream in
a country full of linguistic and cultural diversions. The elite white cube of
art practice is very much borrowed from western world and somehow it does not
fit into our conventional temperament. As a result art remained far away from
the ordinary everyday. We do not have a habit of seeing art regularly. The
museums and galleries remain empty in most of the days in a year devoid of
footfall. I go to museums and feel sleepy. I go to galleries only on the day of
opening because there is a party happening. Moreover we do not have a history
of practicing visual art in a progressive line and we should not expect one. An
inclination towards diversified practices always seek for utter preference.
- As someone who has
researched and is currently archiving the subject, do you think
performance art can be achieved in complete silence? For instance, do you
think the Disposable House Project would have been just as effective as a
silent procession, without the music or the poetry reading?
Yes. The matter
of Disposable House was little different since it was not conceptualized as a
mere performance project. In fact it was never meant to be a singular project
or work. Now when you are asking as on Performance Art, yes, it can happen in
complete (literary) silence. In fact, many times the silence helps to
foreground - the act, the action, the happening, the experience, the encounter,
the being of itself and the performance - more precisely pushing behind the
referential parts.
In case of the
Disposable House Parade also it is the same. Now we are talking around the
available documentations: the materials with me and the memories around the
process. But think of a bystander, a witness, a passerby, a spectator on the
roadside in a city named Guwahati on a particular day. Think of that nameless
faceless spectator for whom it was a sudden encounter with extraordinariness on
an just another ordinary day. It was equally impactful for him or her also
without the poetry readings and other referential information. Five live sized
houses moving on the road, if nothing else could provide, at least produced a
moment of curiosity, created a sense of humour, grabbed the gaze to stop and
think for a while. Sometimes a performance serves its purpose within the
friction of a moment.
Just let me mention
another thing. I am also fond of nonsense. In all my works, many times I
deliberately keep a moment for nonsense. It gives me immense pleasure.
- In the context of the
Disposable House Project, or even Disposable Theatre, how crucial do you
think our understanding of space is to our personal interactions – with
ourselves and the world at large?
Again, I stated
earlier also, the spatial experience and the encounter of a new space has a lot
to do in my case. Like body, a space is also never remain empty or void. It is
always inscribed of too many things. The language a space holds set an impact
upon our bodies as well. So we do not really encounter a space only with a
third party gaze. And the same happens to the space also. It absorbs the language
of the bodies. You do not drive a car in the same pace on a narrow colony
street with what you do on an express highway. We do not behave the same in an
interior space and in the exterior.
And then here an
encounter happens, when an element out of the space gets into a space?
- As a writer and
critic, why do you think performance art remains a largely niche concept
in our country?
It is right that
despite of its relevance and importance Performance Art is still awaited for a
proper attention. In a way, perhaps it do not need that at all. It was started
as a radical and shocking element into the domain and many artists still deny
for documentation of it. It is not even a discipline with certain norms and
that is how many people oppose a pedagogic approach towards performance as Art.
Keeping aside this self reflective and idiosyncratic nature of Performance Art
there are some other issues in front of us what we should discuss.
Most of the
artists in this practice try to implement certain methods, idioms or
communicative signs being inspired from some artists abroad. An ephemeral act
happening in west might mean something at a certain point of time. Other than
certain documentation, memory and discussions we really do not have any idea
about the moment- what exactly happened. Because once it is happened, it is
over. It is not like a photograph or a film that you can see and talk about -
later in any other time. And then we are not sure about 'for whom it may be
concerned'. This point is more crucial because the target audience or the
conceptual location of the spectator is always in a flux. How public is public
art? The problem is the same. In one way we say that performance art is meant
to all, and then we expect an expert viewing from a trained up audience. It is
a big problem. We do not have a healthy environment for discourses. We do not
have trained up spectator. Now I do not know how to train up a 'spectator', may
be doing is the only way.
One more thing,
we are highly effected by - lack of tolerance.
We are not learnt enough to tolerate the ideas of others. Every time a
performance artist is forced to define what
is performance art - which is a big pain. Perhaps no other form of art is
put under a question each time it takes a place. Existence itself could be a
definition for performance - we are not ready yet to accept this.
Samudra Kajal
Saikia
kankhowa@gmail.com
+91 9811375594
26th October,
2015
