I embarked on a journey to get to a destination and even though the destination seems far away ,I halt to enjoy the various other routes that I chanced upon while making this journey……
The first few days were about getting to know each other, choosing our studios and thinking about what we wanted to do. Staying together with the people from various art schools, engaging in discussions and working was great. Khoj team was extremely helpful.
To me, Khoj meant an opportunity for experimentation….for finding……..for growth and that too without the pressure of having to produce a 'successful' work of art. This is what I set out for. I was sure that as far as medium went, I did not want to paint only (which is what I had been doing primarily).
Freedom, time, support, studio, environment, opportunity, company of the fellow artists, the in between studio visits and a library at hand…what more could one want!! J I used this time to play with diverse materials, experiment, install, create, project and to transport into different worlds.
I wanted to change the studio space into a heartscape. It was to do with feelings that one is faced with, while dealing with the constantly changing relationships, the stress in today’s time and the need and want to have a strong heart. I wanted to construct a strong heart with metal rods and then make an interactive installation. The intention was to incorporate the imagery of the strong four petal exhaust and the delicate four petal flower inside the heart. I went about painting the walls of the room, creating a web of wires around the strong heart (symbolic of the nerves). This was the first time I worked with timers(wasn’t as easy as I had imagined) and to top it all not only was I using timers but I was using it to co-ordinate music, exhaust, smoke machine lights and exit (each of which requires a different kind of trigger and functions differently)!!!! Phew…….just wasn’t an easy job. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could do all by myself. I needed the welder, the carpenter, the electrician, technical expertise to help me execute what I visualized.
It was a different experience to work with different people and to co-ordinate the various executions to get what I want. I am the kind who finds it easier to do things rather than getting it done. By the end of it I wasn’t too content with the way I managed to execute.
While working on the heartscape, a lot of ideas and thoughts were bombarding my mind and I thought of how the wavelength of the various thoughts made beautiful paintings in my head. I began to think of a way of mapping the various thoughts. Instead of making a manual pictorial representation of the thoughts I wanted to explore the possibilities of doing it medically. So, I started researching and found two things. One, that there was no process to measure the thought process or of getting representation of the wavelength of the various thoughts (because the processes measure the neuron activity or the chemical activity of the brain). The other being the process of EEG (electroencephalogram) which captures even the blink of the eye and the move of the muscle….Soooo, I decided to use this process to make a work of art using my expressions.
To me it was very interesting as it was for the 1st time that I was involving a medical process in my work. It was also exciting to perform and make a work not with brush, but with expressions. I learnt how to edit, thanks to Mr.Hemant, Parul and the facility of in house editing machine.
Towards the end of the fortnight we could see where each one of us was heading. As time passed each one of us wanted to do more and more, in that limited space. It was at this time that I thought of executing another idea in the bathroom! (4 we had run out of space, but not out of ideas J) So, I did the swuuushh aaah project in the bathroom.
In one sense all three projects had an undercurrent of the theme of living in different worlds simultaneously, whether it was ‘In and Out of the Heartscape’, entering the swuuush aaaahh zone or painting with expressions ( as if I am not just me, but ‘another me’ who does some make up and performs what ‘me’ feels), in a sort of encoded way , which may or may not be immediately felt, understood, seen and decoded. This fulfils the need to hide a bit of me and to reveal a bit of me.
On the open day the whole place was jam packed with little space left to breathe. Things did not turn out to be exactly how I had imagined them to be, the smoke machine did not function the way it was to, the light in the bathroom did not fall in the form of beams of light and the the whole place looked too crammed. . I ran short of time to make the necessary changes.
There was immense scope for improvisation but nonetheless it was a step in this direction and that too a valuable one. I think it was important for me to do and then see how things happen. Had I not done, I would not have known. So, I think that an idea in the head alone, means little, but the journey of its execution takes one to the next step.
I think it was an excellent opportunity of growth for me and in future it will continue to prove to be a good chance and platform for others who finish college and want to explore beyond the academic realm.