Performance Art Residency Nov - Dec 2004

Residency Details

The winter months are choc a bloc full with exhibition openings around town and the residency gang had a colorful time seeing the popular works in the country. Major Exhibitions that occurred during this time Johann Pijnappel's Video art show at the Lalit kala / "Bombay Boys" at the Palette gallery and a solo show of Bose Krishnamachari at the Qutab hotel.

Apart from these out-takes the group had an inaugural presentation at the KHOJ Studios and did a re-take of the same in a more formal assembly at the School of Arts and Aesthetics .JNU.

The group also did series of self curated performances at the KHOJ Guesthouse where they were lodged around the theme of "Body to Beautiful" - a superficially innocent advertising slogan which was caught on Television and re-interpreted in an evening of performances with the only audience being the group itself. The session concluded with very thought out, honest and sincere crits on each other's work. With the exception of Reza the language and the compositional elements used in the session went on to form a solid base for their final works which were to take shape on the Open Day. Reza in fact formalized his very strong performance at the guesthouse at a pre open day session that was held at Khoj involving the same ambient qualities to produce a hyper meditative performance. He also hosted a "Red Rum Session" where open an invitation was sent to everyone for a solo slide party offering his entire works in full uninterrupted display with full stereo sound along with Rum and Coke.

The public session of "Body to Beautiful" witnessed reenactments of the Guesthouse session at the Khoj studios. Tejal's performance worked very well in the studio surroundings as it involved a projection of a close disorienting grained out split colored footage of her Pubic hair with exercise like body actions occurring in front. Marco's and Monali's sessions were really intimate and stood out differently with their slowed down impact. This session also was followed by an intense discussion on notions of Body and the achievable spatial relations using it.

Saumya's performance inspired quite a different reaction from the intended pathos to a near hysteria. But the largely artist audience maintained a calm face which was pointed out to him in the discussion that followed.

Monali's stint at the Marina Abramovic workshop also led her to bring in certain inspired and felt methodology into the entire proceedings. From what started as basic body cleansing rituals through exercises and conditioned food intake into boiled home made recipes.... the body cleansing project tied down the group well and achieved general internal good energy apart from preparing those who partook in it.

Collaborative projects always are unpredictable bonuses that arise out of shared understanding among the artists. In this case as well the Body Cleansing session group generated good chemistry and a better understanding of each other's personalities to spawn 2 collaborative sessions.

The first collaboration between Marco and Monali which was rehearsed aimed towards a "live action" at a pedestrian subterranean crossing brought out a very metaphorical rendition of the north south divide as the subway connected part 1 and 2 of the south extension area of New Delhi and with the performance starting at the part 1 plus, halted by the Police for causing a crowd gathering. The performance itself comprised of Monali and Marco interchanging their mother tongue to sing songs in each others language dressed in a semi mime appearance of being entirely clad in black covered by brown paper bags. Visually in the dimly lit passage the performance acted as an innocent intervention in to the public sphere.

The Second collaboration which transpired between Marco and Tejal Shah was a critically constituted video piece displayed on two facing vertically positioned television screens on the open day, enacted problems of gender stereotypes displayed using stereotypes of gender like facial hair, jewellery, body adornments etc. Composed over a period of two weeks with carefully marked camera and sunlight time locations it involved the capturing of the physical alterations of both the constituent artists, which was also in process via the body cleansing process. Specific curatorial devises included Marco not shaving for a week or Tejal hiring a make up artist from National school of Drama to implement her temporal gender transformations.