Open Invitation
| Photo Credit: Manush John
Nature has a way of making a man feel like a speck of dust. Wide open skies, majestic mountains, swathes of desert sands, towering waves and flashes of lightning.
The rock expanse stretching between Ramnagar and Hampi could also leave one with that infinitesimal feeling of next-to-nothingness. Delving into the relationship between humans and ecology, a year of artistic and scientific research resulted in the creation of Open Invitation, three experiential works of art.
“Those rocks are geologically some of the most ancient parts of the Earth — they are two-and-a-half billion years old,” says Shabari Rao, one of the four artistes involved in the project. “That is way before dinosaurs, the Himalayas or even before the Indian peninsula broke away from Africa! We have based our project in that landscape.”
Open Invitation
| Photo Credit:
Manush John
Talking about the project she says, “We found the expanse of space and time shrinks the human presence which is otherwise so dominant. In the work we’ve created, the human presence is quite subtle and we’ve tried to rebalance the existence of the landscape and of the creatures that live there with us. A shrinking of the human presence was the objective.”
Open Invitation is a work in three parts — a film, an improvisational performance and a sound album. Shabari says the team strove to keep the entire project ‘immersive, contemplative and as nonverbal as possible so people get to experience an expanse of time and space.’
Open Invitation
| Photo Credit:
Manush John
Shabari and Manush John, an artist and filmmaker, crafted a non-narrative film titled Open Invitation that explores the relationship of the human form to the landscape. Singer Bindhumalini Narayanswamy and Shabari conceptualised an improvisational performance score ‘Singing Body’ that ‘unfolds from a place of conscious listening’. The final segment of this work is a sound album by Bindhumalini and Navya Sah, a multidisciplinary artist who works with sound, film, movement and writing. The purpose of this album was ‘to capture the sonic texture of the landscape through eco-acoustic experiments’.
Shabari says the idea for this project took shape during the pandemic when she would go for long walks along those rocks. “There is something quite magical and spectacular about that place. I felt a sense of reassurance — all the troubles and craziness in the world seemed to diminish.”
Open Invitation
| Photo Credit:
Manush John
The project began with Shabari and Manush capturing these emotions in a series of photographs and an experiential film before evolving into tri-part work of art. Supported by Sonic Matter, Switzerland and Swissex, India, Open Invitation will travel to Vienna and Zurich, post its showing in Bengaluru.
A process installation tracing the research journey of this project will be on display at 1Shantiroad from November 18 to 20, with a talk by Thejaswi Shivanand on November 18 at 6pm, to discuss ideas of deep time as captured by the landscape. The Singing Body performance will be presented at Shoonya on November 19 and 20 from 9 to 10.30am.
Open Invitation
| Photo Credit:
Manush John
Open Invitation
| Photo Credit:
Manush John
