a report on vdo show and presentation by paulo nazareth

 

We were treated to some very good vdo footage of brazilian avante-garde performance art.

two works of daniel saraiva...in the tradition of 'latin american and chinese perfomance art' saravira's works are heavy textual. in the first vdo the artist played out the role of a catalyst. he kick-started a question, frame a point of consideration,he used the raw untreated cow hide both as a camaflouge and as a metaphor. in the spirit of relational art the artist dramatically crawled....dragged himself into a cowshed and waited........waited for responses from 'random stranger'. his strangers were cows....they crowded around his crouched/lying figure...confuse beteen familiarity and a stranger...

saraiva's second vdo was a take on the violence of branding in which the again uses the raw untreated cow hide both as a camaflouge and as a metaphor. situated in an rainforest river bed the artist swims ashore...... we encounter a bonfire....and see a pile of metaphor and camoflouge collapsing in front of it....still in anticipation....the audience is stireed as the romantic imagary of a romantic river side bonfire is tranformed in to potential scene of torture as the camera zooms in a branding iron.....the sizzling sound of the iron brandin the raw hide...threw up for the the brutal side non-vegitarianism and animal husbandary......that many of us are party to .as if to ensure there is no complacence...or to mock or relief about the artist not getting hurt......the next act of branding was on the artist's body itself.......even through the relative distance of a vdo...daniel saraiva managed to hit us hard on our stomacs....

daniel saraiva makes his comments specifically from the context of brazilian modernity and its impact on the value for animal life .....and ecology. focusing on the body of the cow.....the artist comments on how the animal is increasinly turning into a staple diet.....and how duing the dry season...families are forced to kill the animal who are otherwise their friend...

Comapered to saraiva work.....Carolina Cordeiro's vdo on focussing on the body....failed to pack a punch.....the context was ambiguous...one wonders why a stereotypical 'perfect' body was chosen as the site of work...even the formal value of the vdo was not captivating.

the our resident artist paulo nazareth showed vdos of his works.....like saravira paulo works in the realm....of contextual art. in the first vdo we witnessed paulo walking into a crowded resturant blind folded ( i use the word for the lack of a better word....blinded would be misleading....though blind folded contains within it the metaphoric value of 'blinded'). he wears two slabs of meat over his eyes....at a time when only the very rich could afford to have more than one helpin of meat in a resurant.....eveen that was prohibitively expensive.....'a meat is gold' slogan was coined in brazil to to able to capture the distance of the commn man from the commodity...blinded by money....na na that is a way to simplistic metaphor.

in the discussion that followed paulo commented that subsequently the prizes of beef have fallen to a huge extent....and now beef is strruggling it out with soya to emerge as the staple food of the brazilians...........and this developemen has largely changed to naurescape of brazil...with vast stretches of the rain forest transfrmed to grazing grounds

paulo next vdo showed him in near ragged clothes wwakkin down the streets melo.....one soon noticed that red was a ddominant colour in his dress and was left wonderin if it stood as a motif for something diffrent........his feet were also coloured red abd apart from walking his other 'act' was that of constantly fixing his rubber slippers.......

paulo told us this story about the people from the rural areas comming into the city for work did not have access to transport....hence had to walk really long distances.....they were known as 'red footed' people as their feet woluld inevitably swell up and become red......

both the was a dark critiqu of the developement model of brazil.....done with a playfuluse of context....yet heavily loaded with the textual...a treat for the mind.....butstuff to shake up some slumber.... :-)

first posted in:
http://khojstudios-performanceart2006.blogspot.in/2006_03_12_archive.html


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rahul bhattacharya

Joint Secretary
Performers Independent
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let the river flow

with what degree of transversing would one be satisfied.

oreet...angelia and me...out on last sunday

 

Dressed as a conservative....slightly shabby nearly middle aged jewish lower middle class male.Oreet was out being tourist in delhi. early summer sunday.....great light for a photo shoot....and certain delights Oreet went through...i could only sense..but could never be a part of. the act of gender crossing had shielded Oreet from the male gaze ...'letting her be' for a while. By the time we arrived at the delli haat, angelia (oreet,s friend a practising psycologist from london who has teken a holiday and come down on a holiday to assist oreet in the final week of the residency) were already high on some grass.....tripping and looking forward to some nice photo shoot. it was fun vdo shooting oreet having her potrait sketched...one could see that the potrait artist had taken oreet to be a male...a sharply depicted angular jaw line sealed this observation. people dropped in to see what was going on...drawn in by the odd looking jewish man and the cameras. Some lunch...some shopping later we came back to the potrait guy....this time with oreet having an palestenian scrarf over her/his head...... This time s/he attracted much more attention. The catchy

red and white pattern....and the scarf giving her gender identity an interesting twist. some of the onlookers could actually sense that it was a difficult potratit to sketch...and soon a small crowd gathered around the artist to watch him render the potrait. it was apparent that the artist was by now completely confused about Oreet's gender identity....maybe even a wee bit disturbed. this infact went on to affect the quality of his work....at the end we got a confused sketch.....disappointing a bit too. However....must admit the guy is very good with capturing expressions of the eyes and capturing a vurnerable expression.

out of delhi haat we went.....had kind of a bad trip when we could neither locate our cab....nor its driver. ........off we went for a drive around lutyens's delhi....the grassy fields around India Gate.......in the evening sun was really inviting. we picked up some beer and got back there........being brought up in india was feling a bit tied up about drinkin around in public spaces...but oreet and angelia cared a heck. ...big time heck. by now oreet's moustache kind of had begun to melt in the sun....and s/he was beginning attract a whole lot of attention. .......As soon as we took our cameras out a crowd had begun to gather and .....hooo soon we were absolutely swarmed. being stared at by a crowd (an interesting collection of kids, toddlers brash youthful men and women of the family) .........my instant reaction to being stared upon was to take out the spare still camera and click away at our 'audience'....this lead to a friendly exchange of random clicking....loads of group photograph.......then peace as the crowd disspersed.

at this point oreet took off her moustash....making her feel more comfortable....and behold her persona comletely changed....suddenly she was transformed into this.....smart sexy jewish boy..... Oreet's change in appreance had a significant impact over our outing....suddenly s/he stopped attracting attention...allowing us to chill and open our beer cans.

as the evening drew to a clso .....some how the clours began to make a sharper imapct (was that due to the beer) ...angelia and i moved into our shutter happy mode while oreet was just lazing around in sheer relish. it had been hard...and fun days work for us and thia was really winding down . light soon started to fade and.....could no longer carry on our clickin spree....it was time to call the day off.....and venture into the evening??? we moved on to the alliance francaise and watthc a movie

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rahul bhattacharya

Joint Secretary
Performers Independent
-------------
let the river flow

Paulami

                                                         *

Paulami staggered in.  Previously she had spent ten minutes trying to open the door. Now all she was capable of doing was collapsing……so she collapsed…..and passed off. Moments or eternity had passed….Paulami woke up to a terrible churning in her stomach……she tried to get up…. couldn't. Instead, a frothy blue fluid rose from her intestines….and forced its exit through her mouth. Surprisingly it has remnant momentum, it traveled a good four inches towards the ceiling before finally resting on Paulami’s face…..the more energetic parts of the fluid did things like dripping on the carpet or rolling down her neck…..the rest lay in melancholic disarray on her face.

Paulami was starved of reaction …..more over she had no time…the second bout of frothy blue fluid definitely had more vengeance ..it managed a remarkable seven inches before crash landing…ten more such bouts of various intensity …before her stock of the fluid apparently ran out. Only then could Paulami afford the luxury of a stabbing headache. For the first time in quite sometime Paulami realized that she had a head….it made her feel better…much much better. Awareness of her head activated her memory….her memory activated her vocal chords. She managed to say “damn it“. Paulami was feeling heavily let down….no one, no one at all had warned her that drinking life…or rather drinking life in gallons could reduce her to this…”damn it” she hoarsely whispered again. Then she passed off. A good few months witnessed  Paulami’s “damn it”s  and the spurting blue fluid. Sometimes she would be well enough to touch her head and shout in pain. Wasn't before January the Paulami could get up.

The blue liquid was a puker’s delight.  It had a happy knack of evaporating without a trace. Watching the frothy blue fluid miraculously disappear had been Paulami’s entertainment for months now. Today it occurred to her that it also meant ….no cleaning up jobs. Paulami deposited herself under the shower. Hours later she could feel her skin reacting to the gush of water…..a few weeks later she felt satisfied.

Only now did Paulami remember time- she then realized that she had no track of it. Switching on her comp she found out that it was 15^{th March} 2003. Something struck her….it felt strange. Paulami took some time to react and adjust to her

(re)functioning long-term memory….Then all she managed to do was smile. Ten years ago on this very date, Jagdish had given her his farewell bar of chocolate.

            *                       *                     *                        *                    

Emotions. What business do they have rearing their heads when one is just beginning to revisit existence?

Paulami’s eyes fell on the grocer’s number scribbled by the telephone. She then discovered that the instrument was as dead as gone.

Ten minutes later, Paulami walked past the surprised appt. guard and into the basking sun. Surprised at herself on locating the neighborhood grocer’s shop,  Paulami had just begun to feel good…. A college girl wearing a white apron propped herself plonk in front of Paulami.

“Mamn” we have come out with a fruit drink….mango flavor….designed to beat the heat out of the summer.  Absolutely refreshing. As a launching scheme we are giving a Rs. 2 discount….it’s called ‘Life’ and it absolutely lives up to its name…..”

“ I am not interested”.

Paulami bought two packets of ‘Wills’. However it was a halfhearted purchase. The fruit drink was making its presence felt in her mind. As she was going out……. “Madam, if you place a party order of more than five cartons today, then you get a free ticket to Timbuktu. Moreover, all the ‘Life’ you can consume out there comes absolutely free.”

                                 *--------------------------------------------------------*

It was fiercely cold and windy in Timbuktu. Paulami spent the first couple of days simply cursing herself. She hadn’t drunk a drop of ‘Life’……it was simply too cold. Snuggling up inside all the clothes she could lay her hands on,  Paulami got tired on lying inside the solitary blanket the guest house afforded and gazing at posters of ‘Life’ pasted all over the room.

Next day….bothering to finish her breakfast, Paulami appeared at the mall….. It was deserted.

A solitary entity…..a young boy with a big mouth was collecting garbage….mostly empty packets of ‘Life’. Paulami approached. A polite enquiry revealed that the founding chairperson of ‘ Life.Inc.’ had died last night, and since Timbuktu’s existence owed every part of it to ‘Life’, the entire city had gone into mourning….for a year.

Upon reaching the guesthouse,Paulami noticed that the guesthouse was functioning as if nothing had happened. A flustered and puzzled Paulami approached the manager.

The manager was playing Solitaire with his wife. A bottle of upturned rose wine lay upon the carpet…..gradually emptying it’s contents onto some eager cockroaches.Paulami glared at the man..till her gaze troubled his aura enough for him to look up.

“I know your concern madam….you stay here as my guest. Just that years are unusually long out here….you have to cope up with that. The mourning does not effect this place…..” he paused and smiled…..”Freddie Mercury stayed here once……all he ever said was “the show must go on”.” he paused again…. Took a deep breath, “Freddie was the respected chairperson’s favorite musician.” Now his eyes grew misty. ”One day the ever respected chairperson was sitting here and sharing some cherry sandwiches with Freddie. Freddie looked at me and said  “the show must go on”…..respected chairperson sir then turned to me and said…..” mister Bingo, so be it”…”.By now the manager was blissfully sad and the cockroaches dead drunk.

Amazed at her calm self  Paulami walked back to her room.

                       -------------------------------------------------------

Some sleep. It almost threatened never to get over. Anyway, it was morning when Paulami woke up. Timbuktu had become colder and windier. Going out, the first thing Paulami noticed was a Para shoot swooping down. It blissfully flopped itself on the lawn. There was nothing but a bundle of newspapers attached.

Someone cleared his throat. Paulami jumped. She sighed in relief when she saw that the sound had originated from the manager.

“They are kind enough to weekly  para-drop newspapers. I wasn't sure how the brash new men in charge of ‘Life’ would treat this place. But they seem very concerned”. Paulami mustered up some mock optimism and inquired about tea…….the switching over to her realist best …..she picked up a newspaper and walked back to her room.

In a blatant challenge to boredom, she opened the business page

-first.

                                    -------------------------------------------------------

The main headline on the business page was…….. a line declaring that Jagdish had acquired the world’s largest chocolate company.

                                    ______________________________

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* This was not the intended   name of the story. Ever since it was written, my friends and I have been calling it Paulami….and thus it was nick named.