"Traveling face" // A Performance Art project , 2016, // Future Collaboration

This is a series of Art performance project develop and planning and willing to perform in different urban spaces which was a part the project titled "future collaboration" curated by Premjish Achari.

Here the idea of collaboration, collective is very important role in my practice. Because of this reason I like the idea of Future collaborations where this project not limited only to produce an Art product for final display. Though it is important also this project focus on process which can help to share, discuss with each other work and going through a collective approach. Also it helps to Artistic growth where every steps going through research based. Indeed, I liked the idea of engaged the viewer in process to train the audience to rethink on ‘Art’. Also it is very important to train and involve the viewer in this collaboration which will erase the gap between viewer and artist. Also sharing the idea with each other is very consequential which always fabricate new questionnaires beyond the conventions. These elements are always being in my practices.

During the month of July 2016 and over the year lots of violence happen in the context of India. In the same time I am working with fear and violence and tried to understand the how it emerged in our psyche unconsciously. As we all know the use of pallet gun by Indian armed forces on the Kashmiri protesters rendered most of them totally blind and injured others badly. We, as outsiders are not the victim of that incident, but we see those victim as an image/photograph through social media, news paper, internet, and electronic media. Here in this project I want to bring those victimized faces physically through my performance. It is like an injured face travels from Kashmir to other cities like Delhi. The traveling face tried to encounter, engage, disturb in front of other physical bodies to inquire how people react to it. There is always one question that engulfs me, which is that as I am not a victim, how should I react? Through this performance I want to realize/feel the pain and offer solidarity to the people of Kashmir. This is an ongoing project I want carry this travelling face to different cities in order to confront the other’s gaze.

Here in this project i started with a note or a poem (?).

The travelling face 
(1)

The travelling face 
I know your face travels from your home to road. 
Sometimes it travels from your bed, 
is it the same face? 
Which people can recognize you? 
Your face is always in front of us, 
not in front of police. 
Enclosed, open face. 
Your face travels in my dreams, 
in those buses, 
in metro, 
travels as a photograph. 
Through a window. 
The gaze hits your face. 
I should believe this is not your face. 
This is mine. 
My face travels in your heart.

Waiting near road to encounter in city of Delhi, near PVR saket.

 in Delhi metro. 

The travelling face invites a Kashmiri friend for witnessed. When travelling face meets the friend, he started to recites "how do you define gift" It could be a package or not or an act of shooting pellets or showing you warmth of democracy...." 

After lots of travel by travelling face, he came out with his Kashmiiri friend to public space in Delhi, near PVR saket. 

in front of PVR saket

             

         

The traveling face / phase 2
(ii)

The travelling face comes from north to east, 
Alone 
bringing the essence, 
to fabricates the pain 
from co-traveler 
He asked – How do we define the gift? 
want to sharing with you. 
? History repeated.  
Travelling face intervene in the context, 
where never had encountered. 
I am also inside the contour. 
? Contour 
? Physical or Psychological. 

the wound were willingly accepted.
Yes 
We are not the victim. 

Why / how should I react ?  


The second phase started at Guwahati, like Delhi but it was started in city bus and finally travelling face meets his friends in War memorials, Dighalipukhuri, Guwahti.
date: 16 sept 2016.

"Travelling Face - Phase 2, yesterday traveled through Assam. Through this performance Anupam recreates the pellet injury to unsettle his co travelers and attempt to initiate a discussion on the violence happening in Kashmir. The first phase happened in Delhi where we traveled with him along a young Kashmiri poet. Travelling Face is a secondary witness who strives to bear witness through reconfigured forms of contemporary testimony to events he has never experienced. Realizing his distance from the experience of the oppression he recreates the pellet wounds of Kashmiris, he travels and encounter to disturb and testify. He brings to the surface the brutal violence carried out by the state on Kashmiri spirit and bodies. He forges a solidarity with the victims."
- Written by Premjish Achari, Curator, Future Collaboration.

travelling face encounter with police near Ganeshguri Flyover.

I collected some stone and try to make it beautiful object through some flower motif embodied some words such as land, democracy, love, stone, throw, peace etc. By holding those stone I was travel through bus and the gesture was offering those stones. My face was like very injured like pallet injury. Many people asked in the bus “what happened?” I replied “I am not the victim why should I react” / “I am not the victim how should I react”. 

Finally I meet my friends in War Memorial park, Guwahati where some of other people started observed me with same questions. I started installed the stones in the park. First encounter happened with the bodyguard and he can’t allow me to stand or sit there. I replied constantly “I am not the victim why should I react” / “I am not the victim how should I react”. Some of the other public in the park neglected me like a beggar and others reacting the same like the bus. Indeed, we started discussion about the violence why I am performing. Finally I installed the stones under a fighter plan used in 2^nd world war and we moved out from the park. 

Suddenly one girl came to me who was observing in the park from the beginning. She asked me that she was willing to carry a stone to her home. I asked which one you want to carry. She replied “the democracy one”. She went near to the fighter plan and might be carry the stone with another which I don’t know. This was the best part of the performance.

After one year of performance in the month of February some of the students of JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) repeated the performance in the campus of JNU in a protest mood. I got the news from my friends. For me travelling face was travel in various ways in different place. 

Students of JNU performing Traveling face in Campus

Umar Khalid, A students activist written mentioning about Travelling face.

by Anupam Saikia.

#performanceart #artperformance #performanceartinindia #palletguns #kashmir #solidarity 

Man carrying object

A photographic Art Performance at Thane, Mumbai.

This work was a part of the residency program at Piramal Art residency, Cycle 4 / Thane, Mumbai. The Cycle 4 of Piramal Art Residency program was exploring the idea of “Binary” and how artist can experiment the idea of Binary through their mediums. Life is often perceived as binaries but do binaries really exist or is it yet another construct. On the other hand “The Binary” of body and mind, or the physicality and psychological conflict have always been the thrust of my work. My purpose was to explore the binary of psychological violence and realty through my art works and bring forward the subconscious terror and conscious artistry in the same platform. In this program I was exploring the idea of binary between construction and destruction embodied inside and out.

process

The residency space is in Thane, Mumbai and it was a medicine factory before which was demolish during the residency period. I was started drawing of that building which was slowly broken down day by day. The work “Man carrying object” is a gesture or reaction to the space. Instead of doing a live performance I want only an image, or a photograph that is a constructed image in destruction space. I painted Gold on my body and tried to hold an industrial object which is bigger than the body. The visuals of this work come into sight that the industrial object going to engulf the body or is it trying to come out from the object. Or was the body tried to hold the object for long time.

here is the Residency video:

by Anupam Saikia.

#anupamsaikia #piramalartresidency #performanceartinindia #artperformance #visualart 

A site specific Installation by Anupam Saikia

Venue: Near Dept of Fine Arts, S.N. School / University of Hyderabad, 2015

Philosopher Zizek said in the documentary named “the examined life” - “We need to our own distance and alienation from nature, to see the trash that we have produced. Furthermore, we need to find a way to do poetry and spirituality in the dirt of our world. Only when we are really able to see and embrace trash can we expose the factors that cause environmental destruction. Only after these factors and their impacts are seen and exposed have we built the ground for real and systemic change to take place.”

Partially i inspired from this and I started to collect some waste material such as electronic dump, wood, plastic which is available in landscape and think about them, its history, and utility etc or why I picked up? Which force me to be chosen the particular object? I am trying to find out from an object to human condition. Therefore I hanged these collected materials in well organized manner which was associated with bourgeois value and aristocratic display of wealth and luxury. Though the scraps conveys an environmental issues, global warming, but I want to experiment something more and constructed beyond that. Here I like the complexity; overlapping and I felt a connection with the human psychological tension. In this work I am not harming the space. It s organically merge in to the space. Because during process the animal or bird like buffaloes, peacock, another bird come to the installation space and they act as usual.

Click Here for this work

INDEED - This site specific installation or the visual is an Abstract, delusion not to see as a gallery work or installation. Through this experiment my aim is to produce sound within the object or between the objects with the help of nature. It is kind of wind chime and the sound is like voice of object or voice of nature which viewer can feel it. Sometimes sounds are soothing, sometimes haunted, and sometimes scary; viewers can open up through sound, also open up their imagination and emotions. The idea emerged in the viewers mind that how they lead their mind through their experiences with sound.

 

The space in between

An installation with readymade object / 2015.

Venue: studio space of Theater Department in University of Hyderabad.

This work is emerges from the everyday object of human life and how I can use these object in a theatrical space enhances into a psychological space. The space in between the object fabricated the frame of isolation attached with the human life embodied it conveys tension, alienation, emptiness, void, poetic, fear, incompleteness, melancholy, isolation within the object and between the objects create a mood which is constructing a psychological space. The uncertainty, the dark empty space, static and rigid object create a haunted space enhancing theatricality and void. 

Details

@ Anupam Saikia.
#anupamsaikia #installationart #visualart

Sleep with a Reason

A collaborative Art Performances by Anupam Saikia, Pallov Saikia and Anupam Aliass.

It was the final day, 3^rd May 2016, of MFA final display of S.N. School, University of Hyderabad. We a group of students who strongly active and participate in ongoing protest and movement at University of Hyderabad.

One needs to ask what role of us or we,  the students from the fine arts department in general has played in relation to the larger politics of the University of Hyderabad campus this year. Especially, in the recent times when the university has come in the center of national and international debate, since the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

That day morning , we came to know that VC appa rao who is the main culprit of this incident and he will come to see our display which we are not agree to allow our show in front of him. So, Anupama Alias one of the final year students stated covered his painting as a reaction or act towards his coming. We decide to sleep in the gallery space where paintings were displayed for the viewer. I bring a brown tap and started to make a marking a space inside the painting studio 01 and decides to a casual sleep. I sleep inside in a casual way and covering my head with pinkies bag to not to listen, not smell, not to see, not to breathe and finally not to  feel his presents.  And Anupama covered her ear with her hands don’t to listen the power structure or not agreed to any kind of intervention in our display. Pallov remove his sandal and sleep on that to kind of mocking towards hid presents. Indeed, unknowlgly , unconsciously Chiranjeevi by come and sleep with us in more casual way to create the satire in the space. 

You tube link : Click here

By Anupam Saikia. Assam

#performanceartinindia #performanceart #anupamsaikia #justiceforRohithvemula