SANDARBH
International Artist Residency At Partapur- BANSWARA (Rajasthan)
Dated - 15 Feb to 15 March 2009Participate Artist1.Ko, Hyun-hie - Korea
2.Ri, Eung-woo -Korea
3.Ryu, Seung-gu - Korea
4.
Anke Mellin -Germany 5.EGAMI HIEOSHI - Japan
6.Nagashima - Japan
7.Umesh Kumar - Bangalore
8.Vijay Sekhon-USA
9.Mr.Ogawa-Japan
10.Joanthan - U.K.
11.Lata Upadhyaya-U.K.
12.Mr.Okabe -Japan
13.Ms Noguchi-Japan
ARTIST WORKS ON THE SITESEGAMI HIEOSHI - JapanTitle: Black Earth
Medium: Bamboo, clay and cow dung.
Vijay Sekhon-USA
Site - Madkola
Medium: Bamboo
Anke Mellin -Germany
The supporting institution is:Behoerde fuer Kultur, Sport und Medien der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, GermanyMedium: Foot print,marbal powder.
Site- house Near play Ground,Partapur.
Partapur inspired me to realize three different works. the first idea appeared by seeing the empty house near the playground. The empty space and many children playing there attracted to do some collaborative work. The idea about PRINT evolved. After I opened the doors curious children appeared and we started cleaning and later painting the house. Then we started by making fingerprints on paper which we observed carefully. Each child drew her/his individual fingerprint on paper. Afterwards visiting children and adults made footprints on white paper. The signed prints were collected and hung on two walls and because the red ink used it looked very beautiful. White marble dust was seeved on the floor and framed by marble bricks. During several workshops people were invited to leave their footsteps on the floor. Two open doors flushed light on the always changing relief and displayed an interesting artwork made by the people of Partapur.
Anke Mellin -Germany As second work I made A BENCH for Chintans Land. The hilly landscape and Mati river valley attracted me to make a curved bench with uprising levels to sit or lay down. With the help of locals I used the traditional broken-stone-technique with mortar for the construction. The bench invites to take a rest and enjoy the view especially at sunsrise and sunset. It is already proved that it works as a meeting place for the people of the nearby village.
Anke Mellin -Germany For the third project called HHHMMM I bought expensive silver plates and collected the shit of animals. While walking on the main road and waiting for animals excrements people watched me and declared me as crazy. But after a while they helped by bringing goat shit for the project(goat shit consists of very small pieces). The display on silver plates in the old market worked really well since visitors understood that animals products have something to do with nutrion of people.
Umesh Kumar
Ko, Hyun-hie - KoreaMedium: Briks, marble, mud,dry grass and plants
Site: Adavera, Bori village.
Size: 180 x 80 x 230 cm
>Not a House<
I think all people take their energy from earth and heaven.
I have seen the area of Partapur mostly as farmland. The natural colors, like red burnt bricks, white marble and yellow hay are dominating the colors of Rajasthan, so I used these materials for making my work. As always natural colors are very interesting for me.
The material also talks about energy: bricks are made from earth, marble was processed while the earth was liquid, and hay is growing constantly on the ground.
Size: 180 x 80 x 230 cm
Ryu, Seung-guTitle: Face
Medium: Stone from the site.
Site: Madkola Village
Ri, Eung-woo. Korea"Sprout in Sandarbh"
Medium: Artist's hair, seeds, Bamboo and iron
Site: Madkola village
I wished the people luck by making an image of a sprout that they can see it from a distance. And I decided to use bamboo as a material. Because the peoples in Partapur use a bamboo basket as a cradle. That is why I chose it. It was very meaningful to make the installation representing their future at the moments. The image of a sprout and a baby growing in a cradle can meet through my work.
Lata Upadhyaya-U.K.
Site - Adevera Pound
FICA Present
Power Of Cloth
Public Art Project by Lochan U
Supported by SANDARBH
Site - Subesh Chandra Bose play Ground,Partapur
Date - 1st to 2nd march 2009
POWER OF CLOTH
The project “Power of Cloth” is very specific to the Vagad region of Rajasthan. This community has a specific cultural space, different from other Rajasthan surroundings. Being born and brought up in the same community culture, I have always been a regular spectator in witnessing the various activities. While pursuing the art education outside I was able to stretch my local to a much wider arena where in an effort was input to develop a dialogue between the self and the community, through their language, their material, their space, their issues, their involvement.
The project includes a life size marriage shamiana typical of this area where the marriages are usually held in open grounds by building up these temporary structures. A huge gate made of iron armature is kept at the entrance with the banner of the parties involved in the marriage. Also are the stylized chairs on which the bride and the groom are seated. Using these visual vocabularies I have tried to reconstruct the whole look of a marriage. The entrance gate and the chairs for the bride and the groom are made in iron structures, covered with the metal net and then further covered with stripes of cloth, considered as a waste, collected from the various tailor shops from different villages. Apart from this huge installation used in marriages, I was also interested in the concept of Marriage, which is all intertwined with the social structure. Caste system and dowry has become a ritual, on which the marriage is performed. What I intended in this project was to use these issues as the major driving force to reconstruct these structures in order to create an atmosphere where one is more aware and more conscious of the environment and the social structures s/he is being framed in.
Apart from its power to represent a region and the social and political aspects involved, cloth turned out to be the most apt medium for its deep involvement in the rituals of Marriage in form of gifts which turns to be a trick to subdued the heaviness of the term Dowry. A further research into this area proved to be very interesting because the clothes in terms of material, colour and design were very different, in fact very specific to Vagad, also that cast system at its strength has a very direct reflection on the choices of clothes being used by the people.
A lot of pictures are being taken as a documentation of the event of gifting. These pictures are a collection of the marriage album. I have collected these pictures from various houses of the different villages and have printed on the cloth for making the sidewalls of the shamiana in a design format generally used in such structures.
Performance by "Mela Group" and local Musician
Venue- Chaar Khamba, Partapur, Dated 5.03.09
Workshop In Action
Welcome in Partapur
Dancing at Marriage in Punjapur Village in Dungarpur District
Having Food at Marriage
Nagashima(Japan) playing drum at marriage
Artists with Groom
Sandarbh in Action
Music Night With JohnyML (art critic and curator), Somu Desai (artist) and Feroze Babu (Photographer and Web designer)During their Art routes in Partapur
Fauji Daaba and a Flat Tyre (www.johnyml.blogspot.com)
Lesson one: When you are on the road, dont drink too much at night. In Partapur we had a good party with the visiting artists and I had drunk quite well. Hence, yesterday morning I got up with a heavy head. Then and there, I decided I am not going to drink during the travel. Let me see whether I would be able to stick to my decision.
It was time to say good bye to Partapur. We had an important place to visit there: The Living Museum. So we go there accompanied by a friend from Sandarbh. Somu asks him not to tell the directions so that he could recollect the way for himself. We reach there and I too remember the place very well as I had gone there coulple of times before.
Living Museum is a concept developed by Chintan Upadhyay. A small village, almost a kilometer away from the Partapur main market, is where the Living Musuem is located. The word ‘museum’ might give you certain ideas about the building and location. But this does not have anything to do with those common notions. It is a double storied shack formerly used as a village community centre and at times it doubled up as a classroom. It was lying abandoned for long time and when Sandarbh started in Partapur, Chintan decided to activate this abandoned space.
This museum has got a lot of house hold utensils and other living tools. These are the actual tools used by the poor villagers who eke out their daily sustenance from farming and cattle rearing. They all wear minimum clothes and work throughout the day in farms and dairies. A couple of buffaloes respond to our arrival with a harsh sort of mooing. Skimply clad women look at us with some kind of amusement in their eyes. The Sandarbh boy who accompanies us opens the doors of the museum for us.
Living Museum functions in an interesting way. People can keep their traditional and living tools and utensils here as in a museum display. Whenever they want to use these tools they can take it away. Once the work is done they bring it back to the museum. However, what you see are the old and rusted tools, which have interesting shapes and structures. Many of them have gone out of use thanks to the change of pattern in life. While seeing them one can connect to a time when these tools were really used for carrying out daily chores.
We have become too much depended on the modern technology. We have almost become slave to these gadgets. If the mobile phones show poor connectivity we get disturbed. I am supposed to write a blog. We come back to the Sandarbh office. I open one of the lap tops we are carrying and suddenly its display is scrambled. I dont feel challenged as we have a master lap top with us with the latest softwares. It belongs to Feroze. We call it Pentagon and the other computer FBI.
Feroze opens the Pentagon computer for me and suddenly it crashes. Virus? Feroze is suddenly gloomy. He calls up his son and takes a few tips from him. This 19 years old young engineering student is a computer wizard. He can fix any modern gadgets just by looking at it. He has an eye for technology.
Some people are like that. They can fix the machines easily. Bhavin Mistry is a young artist friend and he can fix computers using any available tools. Recently he repaired a computer using one small kitchen knife as his sole tool! I am not a technical person at all. For me computer is ‘Microsoft Word’ and internet. Anything goes wrong, I call the lifeline numbers. While Feroze fixes the computer, I remember A.J.Cronin’s essay titled ‘Overhauling’. Some people keep overhauling their gadgets all the time. Give them a cycle, they will overhaul that also.
I finish my blog in Feroze’s computer, which is ready by now. After lunch we leave Partapur and drive towards Ujjain. On the way we visit two acres of land recently acquired by Sandarbh near Partapur. Sandarbh is planning to start its permanent residency programs here. Will it go against the founding ideals of Sandarbh, I wonder. Sandarbh is all about moving. But one cannot be a rolling stone all the time. Sandarbh too needs its permanent headquarters.
Landscapes change around us. Inside the airconditioned car we dont feel the heat outside. In central India, it is already summer, though the early mornings and evenings are cold. The rural Rajasthan landscape is predominantly brown in color. The sky is sharp blue today. It soothes the eyes. It has the freshness of a teenager. The rigor and vigor will increase as the summer months would progress in the coming days. I look at the changing colors of landscapes. Somu drives and Feroze takes a nap at the backseat.
In Gujarat we experienced the quality of roads. Throughout Gujarat roads are in a good condition. The public transport system is more or less good. May be that is the reason why many people want Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India. Recently someone commented that India need Naredra Modi as Prime Minister and central government should be led by the Congress Party! People are so desparate as they are caught between vying ideologies and their innate demands for progress and development.
As we enter Rajasthan, the roads change in quality and complexion. Pot holes appear in regular intervals. Palak Raval, who was with us during the first day had proudly commented on the quality of the Gujarat Roads. “Roads tell you where you are,” she had said.
That is true in a way. As we enter Madhya Pradesh, suddenly we find our vehicles running on a rough path. Optimism is the best tool when you are on the road. We hope for this bad patch to finish and get into a better road. But better roads never seem to come. Tossed and bumped inside the car we feel like pieces of fruits in a juice machine. Some kind of alertness come back to us.
For the last few days we have been eating vegetarian food. Suddenly I tell that we should eat some non-vegetarian food today. Somu is not a non-veg person. But he too wants to eat some egg today. So we wistfully look for some restaurants or dabas that sell non-veg food. Most of the wayside restaurants in Madhya Pradesh do not sell non-veg food. Finally we find one person standing with a few trayes of eggs and a stove.
We approach him and ask for omlets or scrambled egg. He smiles.
“I sell only boiled eggs,” he says.
His expertise is in boiling eggs. He may not knowing how to make scrambled egg or omlets. But there must be another reason. A business is operated according to the demand of the people. Here people are not asking for scrambled eggs. People are comfortable with boiled eggs. Then there is another way of making a business successful. The person can create a demand for scrambled eggs or omlets. But this guy must be lazy, I think.
“Go two kilometers from here and you find ‘Fauji’ daaba. There you get non-veg stuff,” one boy who sits on his cycle carrier lazily tells us. He almost sounds dismissive. He does not like our presence there.
Fauji Daaba, suddenly the sign board appears on our right side and we feel as if we had found an oasis. Fauji in Hindi means soldier. Soldiers are supposedly eating non-veg. We are happy for the oasis, which eventually turns out to be an oasis. It is just a mirage. This fauji who doubles himself up as the cook and cashier tells us that he does not serve non-veg food. Finally we settle for the usual vegetarian food.
Fauji looks really a soldier in his well built body and crew cut. He has a straight moustache. And his voice has a commanding power. Even when he spells out the menu for us, he relives his parade ground days. He shouts the names of the items. We order our food. We feel that we have a strong appetite at that moment and order for larger portions.
If someone wants to know about the food, this is what we order, Dum Aaloo (two plates), Dal Tadka (two plates), Bhindi (two plates), salads (two plates) and tandoori rotis. Once he gets the order the Fauji gets into action. He moves fast as if he were moving through trechnes and enemy terrains at the border. Soon the place is filled with different kinds of aromas.
The cool breeze touches us. We hold ourselves together. I lie down on the charpoy and look at the starry sky. I look for some constellations up there. But the sky suddenly looks like a modern gadget. I dont understand anything. I leave my effort.
The tandoor is ready and the stove started glowing. We go close to it and feel the warmth. On the other end, we find a television playing the Zee TV Sa Re Ga Ma program. Fauji’s family members, a wife and a daughter sit on the floor and watch the TV. We too watch the TV for a while. Sonu Nigam and Suresh Wadkar speak to the competing kids with compassion. Canned laughter and canned tears jerk out of the television.
Finally food comes. We think that we can eat a lot. But we dont eat. The appetite has gone. We eat the food in silence. Each of us has withdrawn to the private world.
Ujjain is forty five kilometers from here. After food we are considerably energized. Somu reves up the engine and we jump into the car. We leave Fauji behind.
We are now very close to Ujjain. A huge archway with sign boards and directions welcome us. We read out the distances loudly. Suddenly our car shakes and shivers. It is ten at night.
Yes, we get a flat tyre. The rear left tyre is punctured. The car wobbles and comes to a halt. Right in front of us there is a check post. Huge trucks queue up to get an entry into the city. Only by 11 o clock they are allowed to enter.
We dont feel challenged. We take out the tools and start working towards changing the tyre. We put the jack under the car and lifts it. Suddenly the jack fails and the car comes down with a thud.
I walk into the night and look for a puncture fixing guy and luckily finds one near the check post. He is reluctant to walk a few meters to our car. I request him to come along. Finally he relents. After two hours of harrowing struggle (thanks to the complicated structure of our car) we get our tyre fixed. The young man who helped us do not charge us too much. The tube has got four holes in it thanks to the usual suspect, a sharp nail. Nails are the worst enemy a traveler can confront when he is on the road.
Exhausted by now we somehow want to reach a hotel. Finally we get a decent hotel and we fall down on the beds.
Before sleeping I think of this temple town. I have been here before. I had visited the Mahakala temple, one of the most famous Shiva shrines in India, with Mrinal, long back.
With some sense of happiness and contentment we sleep.
PS: While driving towards Ujjain, I came up with this idea of making a short film once we reach in Bastar. I conjured up a story quickly. It is going to be a very simple moive. One man comes to visit Bastar. Another person starts following him. Or he thinks that he is stalked by somebody. The film is about of stacking and surveillance. I am sure it is going to be an interesting experience.
Partapur - A Contemporary Art Site
“Before coming to Partapur I didn’t know anything about this place. For the last five days I have been traveling around this village and now I have found a site to do my public art project,” Anke Mellin tells me. Anke is an artist and curator from Germany. She is in Partapur to participate in the Sandarbh International Artists Workshop. “I like the people here. They are very intelligent and they know how to negotiate with foreigners,” she adds.
Perhaps, the people in this village did not know how to deal with the foreigners a few years back. They used to look at the visitors with awe and suspicion. But with the Sandarbh Workshop quite active here, the villagers have become used to the presence of foreigners.
Sandarbh Workshop for Site Specific and Environmental Art, established in 2003 by the artist Chintan Upadhyay is now well-known all over the world. It has already conducted two workshops in the US and in May 2009, it will have its chapter opened in London under the leadership of the UK based artist Ivan Smith. In Hungary, artist Eross Istavan is working towards starting a Sandarbh Chapter. In Baroda, Chintan had already done a Sandarbh Workshop. In Delhi and South Gujarat too there will be annual Sandarbh Workshops soon.
Years back, when Chintan started Sandarbh Workshop in Partapur, a small village that aspires to become a town, in Banswada district, Rajasthan, he had this idea of bringing art to the people. He believes that art could happen anywhere. It is not necessary to have galleries and urban museums to showcase work of art. “Sandarbh means context. I can make art anywhere. If I am sitting in a restaurant and if I am making a drawing on a piece of napkin, I am converting that space into an art space. Partapur is a village and at the same time it is a context for the art to happen,” says Chintan.
Sandarbh has three annual features: there is a ten days long Indian artists’ workshop. The month long workshop is for the visiting artists from different parts of the world. The third feature is a six months residency program in Partapur. Artists could stay here for six months and do any kind of art they would like to do. The basic idea is to do public art projects with available materials and with local participation.
When we are here, the month long international artists’ residency program is about to start. Yatin Upadhyay, who leads the Baneswar Lok Vikas Sanstha (BLVS), an NGO in Partapur, gives able leadership to the ongoing workshops. To help him out and also to do the organizational works artist Shreyas Karle is here. Another young artist Lochan Upadhyay also works full time with Sandarbh. Interestingly, none here works for remuneration. “It is a voluntary act and you are welcome,” says Chintan.
Many young artists have already been a part of this workshop ever since it started. Many have gained fame and fortune in the art scene. And all of them, whether successful or not, take a lot of pride in being a part of Sandarbh. Two years back I also participated in Sandarbh Workshop as an observer.
I have very special memories about this place. All of them come back to my mind once we reached here yesterday night.
The drive from Baroda was smooth. Palak Raval, a Mumbai based artist, who participated in Sandarbh last year, also joined us from Baroda. She was going to Partapur to work as a volunteer in the ongoing workshop. Her job would be to facilitate artists.
I like this idea of Sandarbh. It gives you a feeling that the whole program is yours. Nobody owns Sandarbh. You can be part of it and if you want you can start a Sandarbh in your place. There are no hierarchies and bureaucracy in it.
The moment we struck the main road that leads to Rajasthan I fell asleep in the backseat. The Gujarat Thali treat by Kishu was pretty heavy with all its sweet dishes. My body and mind relaxed as the music system in the car played out the old numbers by the legendary singer, Kishor Kumar.
I woke up after an hour and found that we had already crossed around seventy kilometers. Then I expressed my wish to drive the car. We changed seats and I drove the car for half an hour. While I was at wheels, the ambience inside the car changed dramatically. Palak, who was humming tunes and cracking jokes also became silent. Feroze was giving me directions.
“Wives never like to drive when the husbands are with them,” Feroze says. “They give a lot of directions and they never believe that their wives can drive properly.”
“Mrinal stopped driving because of me,” I tell Feroze. He smiled.
Somu was like a tensed husband. Feroze was like a considerate one. I was the hapless wife. After half an hour, Somu tricked me out of the driving seat.
Later Feroze took the charge. He is an excellent driver. After watching Feroze driving, Somu made peace with himself. Then he slept. I became the navigator and ‘spiritual guide’ for these ‘excellent’ drivers.
Do I feel bad for being a bad driver? I don’t. I can drive people crazy. And I do it well. Nothing to worry.
We reached Partpaur around 8 O’clock at night. The place looked so familiar to me.
After having a quick shower, we all reached one of the rooms in Sandabh office where a party was going to start.
In the party we meet three Korean artists, Ko Hyun Hie, Ri Eung- Yoro and Ryu Seung –gu. All of them belong to a famous environmental artist group in Korea called Yatoo. Anke Mellin is from Germany. Egami Heoshi and Nagashima are from Japan. Umesh Kumar from Karnataka is the Indian participant this time.
Egami Heoshi is a great entertainer. He dances well. Nagashima is a drummer. He has brought his drum kit along. But in the party he prefers to play a bucket. He covers the bottom of the bucket with a towel and uses the sticks to create drum like muffled sound. He does it quite well.
There is a dholak (percussion instrument) also. Yatin plays it well. I take it from him and start playing it, following the rhythm created by Nagashima. We all sing songs from our respective languages.
Later Palak told me that I sang well and complimented me for my ‘good’ voice. I felt good. I forgot that I was a bad driver. I should say that Yatin and Shreyas are wonderful singers. Yatin sings Rajasthani folk songs and Shreyas sings classical songs and he plays harmonium too.
I speak to the visiting artists. They are all excited about the works that they are going to do in Partapur.
Today our plan is to spend time around Partapur. Our next destination is Ujjain.
Preparing Food for All by Artists
Sandarbh Theatre Group Perform performance at Primary School Pipalwa Village
Artist Nagashima (Japan) Playing Drum with Local Children with Local Instrument
India through German Eyes, some impressions from Anke Mellin
I was picked up at Ahmedabad by some nice people and after 5 hours travel by car arrived at Partapur. A small villagelike town with 24 thousand inhabitants. It is dominated by a long road. At both sides is a chain of houses without any gap between. There almost everything what one needs is sold: fabric, kitchen utensils, herbs, grain, utensils for keeping animals, jewelry etc. there are also a lot of barbers and tailors. Some sell Incense and pictures of saints.
From morning 9 am until 7 pm many things are going on. And because after a three months draught the street consists mainly of dust. During daytime it becomes a thick cloud of dust which enters the lungs. Animals are part of the population. They are living in symbiosis with human beings: goats, cows (2 kinds of cows- Buffalo and Zebu), sheep, dogs and also I saw a wild pig in the street. They all stroll slowly and not aggressively through the town. The animals are searching for waste which is thrown onto the street, but in the evening they go home where they are fed. Cows, sheep and goats are milked and this product provides an important part of the nutrition. The people drink and eat it as some kind of Yoghurt. Together with vegetables and Chappatis (some kind between pancake and bread) it is the daily diet. The kitchen really is purely vegetarian, they do not even eggs. The taste is delicious and people look very healthy, slim but in good shape. Many are naturally skinny, they have bodies like children.
The most impressive thing in Rajasthan are the colorful women's dresses. They consist of at least two strong colors, which go together very well. What we Westerners would not even think that it looks good is beautiful here. The women look like flowers. The dark skin, black eyes and hair makes it most impressive. Women walking very upright with metal water pots on their heads and many other things too can be seen often.
During the first days we traveled a lot by car to see the surrounding area but also getting acquainted to the specific atmosphere of the region. Also we were introduced to possible places for our work which are supposed to react to the specific site. I would like to develop something near a big playground where boys enjoy the late afternoon by playing foot- and baseball. The playground is part of several schools which are located there also. An empty house attracted me and I got the permission to work with it. Together with schoolchildren I want to clean the house and paint the walls. On the inner space of the floor I will put marble dust and invite the children and people from the area to enter and leave their footprints on the marble dust. The three doors will be opened and the light will expose a relief of feet traces. Before the performance takes place I will hold a workshop at school where we play with the notion of traces- traces which we- human beings leave on earth etc. The idea is not quite clear but it will be something like this.
In addition- may be- will construct a platform at Mahi river, where people can sit, relax and watch the beautiful landscape.
_resize.jpg)
+-++detail._resize.jpg)
_resize.jpg)
+-++detail._resize.jpg)
