From cradle to coffin

http://www.artconcerns.net/2007december/html/coverstory.htm

'From cradle to coffin' is a performance based work, made in collaboration with the amateur actors of Beneshwer Lok Vikas Sansthan, Partapur, duirng a site specific residency organised by Sandarbh.
The work is based on the practice of female foeticide.
Bamboo cradles made by the Pratapur based craftsmen are used in most families here. Used cradles were donated by mothers for this project. Some were broken down. Others had tell tale marks of the child like the ‘taveez’ and the ‘sacred thread’. A slight extension made on one of the sides transformed these cradles into the shape of a coffin.
A performance based on ‘The diary of an unborn child’ was set around these cradle-coffins. The five actors dressed in all white took the position of a feotus in the womb, reciting the story of the child until the abortion. The performers carried these cradle-coffins in between the market streets, with performances in between. At the end of the village, the cradle-coffins were offered to the river Mahi following the cremation rites of the dead.

October 5th.
Today my life began. My Parents do not know it yet, I am as small as a seed of an apple, but it is I already. And I am to be a girl. I shall have blond hair and blue eyes. Just about everything is settled though, even the fact that I shall love flowers.
October 19th.
Some say that I am not a real person yet. But I am a real person. My Mother is and I am.
October 23rd
My mouth is just beginning to open now. Just think, in a year or so I shall be laughing and later talking. I know what my first word will be MAMA.
October 25th
My heart began to beat today all by itself. From now on it will gently beat for the rest of my life without ever stopping to rest! And after many years it will tire and then I shall die.
November 2

I am growing a bit every day. My arms and legs are beginning to take shape.
November 12

Tiny fingers are beginning to form on my hands. Funny how small they are! I’ll be able to stroke my mother’s hair with them.
November 20

It wasn’t until today that the doctor told mom that I am living here under her heart. Oh, how happy she must be! Are you happy, mom?
November 25

My mom and dad are probably thinking about a name for me. But they don’t even know that I am a little girl. I want to be called Kathy.
December 10

My hair is growing. It is smooth and bright and shiny. I wonder what kind of hair mom has.
December 13

I am just about able to see. It is dark around me. When mom brings me into the world it will be full of sunshine and flowers.
December 24

I wonder if mom hears the whispering of my heart?
December 28

Today my mother killed me.

Right to home

The project was an art and media workshop that aspired to give the children tools of visual grammar and media skills to not only draw sculpt or animate but also to use art as a therapy and a means to become articulate about their rights, needs and desires. The documentation of this workshop will be translated into multi media works to be displayed as inserts in multiplexes and cable network. These media works will explore the collaboration of art with advertisement techniques in information dissemination and building marketing strategies for dissemination of the plural voices.

This art and media workshop explored the connection of Tibetan ritual and cultural practices with formal education in an attempt to create a vernacular curriculum of practice. The exploration of the ritual as an articulation of a thought process was easier for the children to associate with, considering the similarities in the underlying patterns of the structure. The sessions attempted to introduce art as something with which they were already familiar with and practice or see on an everyday basis, rather than introduce another formal subject of study. In a span of 7 days we worked with the children on visual grammar, story boards, claymation, photography, architecture planning and land art.

The Table of fasting

For this work, I attempted to concentrate on one small aspect of Satyagraha that gave strength, perseverance and an immense ability to love others (even your oppressors) to the Satyagrahis- Fasting
In our times, out of the many experiences of fasting for self-control or for a larger cause, I chose four real life stories that never made the headlines, but yet talks of the struggle of a common man. These stories have been read in the form of a ‘before-meal prayer’ in front of empty plates on a well laid table. The projected eyes on each plate, stand witness to the truth of the incidence, of the experience and of the prayer.

Breathingin-Breathingout

Breathingin-Breathingout is an abstract experiential work, that has been visualised more as a meditative painting than as a motion picture. The work is a fusion of an abstract imagery that has been juxtaposed with a ‘found’ voice over of the breathing technique of Pranayama from the classes of the Yoga teacher- Eoen Finn.
The 5 minute experimental video, expresses the mutually existing principles of life (breathing in & breathing out) and death (not breathing in & not breathing out) through the disjunction of the black visuals against the serene sound of pranayama (breathing technique).

The work was inspired from my confession of the guilt of the death of two birds through my hands. Through the 9 months of shooting and simultaneous editing of my frenzied eyes that represented the birds, gradually transformed into a silent acceptance of the continual strife between sustenance and destruction in life. I have shot and performed for this video at the same time. The foreseeing of what will be captured by the camera before performing in the marked frame was an interesting part of the process. The process required me to observe my own body as an object of performance to be viewed and captured in a frame without forgetting the emotions and guilt attached to it from the past. The work aspires to communicate a meditative feeling concluding in a haiku that essentially life is all about breathing in and breathing out.


Technical information - To be viewed on through a projector on a large screen

Color/b/w -black & white
Time Duration -5 minutes 9 seconds
Year -2006