Candle Light March

From India Gate to Jantar Mantar in Support of Anna Hazare's Fight Against Corruption
New Delhi, 7th April, 2011

Garden Of Eden

Cubbon Park in Bangalore is a well-known tourist attraction located in the heart of the city. It was originally created in 1870 and today covers an area of about 300 acres. Many official and public buildings are located within and along the periphery of the park including the High Court, City Library, Government Museum and the Press Club. It houses many Indigenous and exotic botanical assets and among them, one of the highlights as mentioned on the parks website is the Bamboo Grove Nook. The Park is under the control of the Department of Horticulture which is responsible for the administration and maintenance of the park and is protected under The Preservation Act, 1979 passed by the Government of Karnataka to preserve the uniqueness of the park. This park is one of the reasons why tourists visiting the city of Bangalore have nicknamed the city itself as the 'Garden City'.   

           

This series was part of the Group exhibition, Another World held at the Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore from 16-25th March, 2011 held as a culmination of the photo workshop with German contemporary art photographer Heidi Specker.

TV BOX

What interests me is how the processes of perception routinely alter what we see and how our knowledge creates our reality as much as the truth. I wish to explore how our comprehension of images changes in the context of how they are viewed, where they are viewed, what details are included in the visual and what is left out. How when objects are viewed without understanding, the mind will try to reach for something that it already recognizes, in order to process what it is viewing and how accompanying text / information can transform our understanding of an image.

Choreo-Photo-Graphy Workshop - I

These photos were taken during this workshop conducted by David Bergé and Trajal Harrell in New Delhi in February, 2011.

We study or maybe - we try to study...

Choreo-Photo-Graphy Workshop

Compositional Frameworks for Dance
A workshop by David Bergé and Trajal Harrell

19th to 24th February, 2011 @ Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi

Wim Wenders has written that if you go to the cinema to see a film that claims to document something, you’re likely to be disappointed….you never actually get to see what you want to see, but rather an attitude towards it, an idea of it, an opinion about it.

When I first saw David’s work the images struck me as being ‘normal’. The photographs, to me an uneducated eye, did not seem to have any of the usual photographic flair. It is only when you delve deeper that you notice the naturalness of the movement, the rational frames, the objects in the periphery and the colours of reality which actually encourage this perception of normality and you realise that this perhaps is exactly what he intends. 

The first activity that Trajal introduced at this workshop was a discussion on whether choreography could be separated from dance and vice versa. He went on to quote Bojana Cvejić “If the body I dance with and the body I work and walk with are one and the same, I must necessarily entertain the suspicion that all of the body’s movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, choreographed.” 

This workshop did not approach learning as we in this part of the world understand it, where one teaches and the rest listen, but rather was about conversations and collaboration while exploring thoughts and concepts, which slowly but surely led to a shift in perception. 

Yeah! David and Trajal – Go on.

Rainfall

It is quiet down there
With echoes sleeping lightly on its tether-
Save when, through the still air,
Footfalls break, sharp crack after crack,
Of bursting globes, of stillness set close together,
In a far fading line.
It is quiet down there
But for the rain's faint whispering,
The street is lonely where there might have lingered
Women and men with voices distant, low:
Now the rain only
Light, cool-fingered,
Drips from the trees, drips, drips.
I at my window am lonely:
My thoughts are ships
Which know not whence they come nor wither go,
Sailing forever on the lonely seas,
Forever to and fro. . . .

From - Rainfall : Summer Evening By Geoffrey West

Nakhlau (Lucknow)

Lines in praise of Nakhlau (from Qaiyum)

Well it is known to all the peoples of the earth that the city of Nakhlau (which the vulgar and the rough-toungued called Lakhnau, or One Hundred Thousand Boats) stands without equal for the beauty of its gateways, and the majesty of its walls, the grace of its towers, the sheen of its domes, the lustre of its meanest dwellings washed with lime and shimmering under an indigo sky. Who has not heard of Chowk, with its heaven-embracing markets loaded with silks and incense, sugar and mangoes, its colonnades festooned with peacocks, its fragrant stares washed hourly with crimson juices? Here, veiled, pass heart-expanding women with chaplets of flowers and comely boys with languid gait. Here are bejewelled elephants and haughty eunuchs, there frolic charioteers and vegetable lamps. Here are pannikins of crushed pearls, trays heavy with sweetmeats, the mouth-rejoicing gulab jamun, the tongue delighting jalebi, the tooth-vibrating kulfi, the universe-arresting Sandila ladoo; there are philtres, a thousand roses distilled in a vial; here again are gossamer bodices, chikan-worked, of which a courtesan may put on twelve and still not be modestly clad.