"On the Body" // an Art Performance project by Anupam Saikia.

In the medium of “Art performance” ,the politics of the body is very prominent i.e. more physical, solid, existential, contextual in front of the audience where audience can feel the attachment, connect - reconnect with the visual that emerges from the medium. I am exploring the body as a surface and playing with it and try to understand the politics of surface through my experiment. The visuals or images of my work and performances I have made so far tried to explore the nature of chaos and violence in my surroundings camouflage in our psychology also being an Assamese I would like to relate my Assam experiences with the recent global developments.

I am engaging with those questions that how personal narrative has an important role in the social context, how the personal narratives or conflict are become universal? This project starts from a personal dialogue within family members. The narrative is like: when I am working in studio at Guwahati my parents called me every day and told about violence, murders, negative news, riots, community conflict, bomb blast etc constantly happened in Guwahati, and many other places of Assam. These kinds of news are travels to my home through electronic and paper media which is badly sensationalized by media. It is obvious that my parents worried for his son. Meanwhile, I should convince my father everyday that I am fine, nothing happening to my area where I live. These phone calls irritate me, though I can knew these things from news paper and this personal talk forced me to think why they worried so much?, they affected badly unconsciously, even I was not near to place where all these things are happening. They got the news that was too much sensationalizing, too much provocative which is create a fear and violence in human psyche. I think this hidden disturbance or unconsciously this conflict, how we see or how we were made to represent and it’s enhanced a delusion – illusion in our human psyche.

I started to cover every object of my studio space with news paper. It took a time and helps me to understand how unexpected stories came into our life and it controlled our work condition as well as creates suppression in our psyche.

work in progress

I covered all the materials that I am using in my studio practices and using my body to interact with those objects. Also I am covering my body with news paper and perform in the constructed space. It is similar to act of inscribing me with report which deals with the political turbulence as well as transforming the personal narrative in to the social context.

"On the body"
venue: Painting studio 01, Dept of Fine Arts, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad.
Performer: Ranjan Kumar, Sarvani Varicharla and Anupam Saikia
Duration : 8 days / 2014

• To watch the video : click here

This work is an inside and intimate studio space where I performed. And I wanted to intervention in public spaces where the audience cannot be defined by the artist. It is also challenge to the artist to act (?) in public spaces and psychologically conscious in every moment where artist has to respond the situation. I selected the common space (shopping complex) of University of Hyderabad where I can interact with the student through my body. Therefore I covered my body with news paper at my studio and stated walk on the road of university campus.

"Camouflage text" 2014
Venue: Campus of University of Hyderabad

Walking inside the campus of University of Hyderabad

Students intervening on the body

This walk is like everyday walking to the tea stall and having tea, gossiping with the friends at the evening and tries to create a dialogue with the students. During the conversation I got lots of questions on the public space. I was thinking about the materials what I am using in my performance that was why I am using particular news paper, what is the important role of the context?

 With those questions I want to intervene in the context of Assam. Meanwhile I started to study local news paper from 2008 to 2014 and tried to find how they manipulated story or link with incidents happened to the context of the people where I found much relation between different stories.  I collected some important news such as violence, riots, community conflict, bomb blast, political chaos, identical conflict etc and got some link within it. If we study and compare one month of different news paper than we can get the point what I am talking about. Albeit the inspiration came from the personal stories it is becoming universal. The manipulations enhance a delusion-illusion space in our human psyche which fabricated a silence space in human psyches embodied produces fear and violence. The coexistence of fear and violence in our everyday public, personal and private spaces lead to the regimentation and disciplining of everyday work conditions. As a consequence, the possibility of workers’ self-control on their work in the area of knowledge production as well as scope of developing of anti-hegemonic subjectivity constantly faces a threat. Is the structure where we live, how we live, our choices, interpretations, thoughts, vision, etc already constructed/created? For the sake of this we can’t identify what is going on? Or what will be going to happen?

Performance 03, 2014
Venue: Ganeshguri, Guwahati, Assam

In this performance  I juxtaposed many news headlines carry different narratives, create a new story and pasted on the body by two another people who are covered the body with the help of Gamusha (kind of textile used for prestigious purpose). I tried to create some question and public rethink towards those stories.

Performer detained by police

• To watch the video: You Tube Link 

After one and half hour of performance police came to performance space and took me to their custody. Almost 5 hours of detention by police. I think the act, intervention spontaneous reaction of police also part of the performance. Albeit police took me from performance space, my performance not ended there. The mass media was reproducing the narratives and the images travel to door to door. 

• News Telecast : To see the news telecast 

#performanceartinindia #performanceart #anupamsaikia