Current Pulse- Performance Practice In Bangalore

Lina Vincent Sunish

Bangalore is known for the experimental and transdisciplinary nature of its art practices. Performance practice is one of the areas in which several artists are gradually building up a repertoire, making inroads into both gallery spaces and public arenas. The artists, some of them who have been working with performance over a long period, and others whose tryst with the art form has been recent, are all attempting to articulate their concerns more comprehensively, and make a place in the transforming framework of contemporary art history. The artists Smitha Cariappa, Murali Cheeroth, Dimple Shah, Sanjeetha Manjunath, Katarina Rasic, Paramita Das and Jeetin Rangher give quick responses to Lina Vincent Sunish’s survey.

MY INTEREST IN PEFORMAT IVE PRACT ICE BEGAN …
Smitha: …with “Inhabiting space within space”. I used cloth and perishable materials like food, salt and sand in my interactive installations. Inviting the audience into the installation space was a ‘performative act’ and a mutual understanding of being ‘the observer and ‘the observed. Cloth became the ‘second skin’ over my body. In the process I decided rather than make objects 3 D, I would put my -self/body in the installations and become the art work – body as a “mode of communication”; as a “living sculpture”. My early performance artworks were in public spaces and I later moved indoors as I began to use my videos as backdrops for live performance to magnify emotion and bring in multiplicity. Murali: …when I was involved as a political activist in early and mid 80s in Kerala. It was a time of social, intellectual and cultural experimentation. Dimple:…during my Ken School of Arts days, prior to which I had done traditional theatre. At Ken we experimented with different forms of experimental theatre. I went for further studies in M S University of Baroda in 2000, during my first year I had began with performances documented in sequenced photographic format, the images of which became part of my printmaking compositions. My experimentation increased and that’s how my journey into performative practice started.