THE ARTIST-SCHOLAR WALKS: PASSAGE TO ‘ELSE-WHERE’
Theatrical-cinematic walk, Performative essay, Book-Chapter
September 2020
Plymouth, UK
Published in “Walking Bodies”, Triarchy Press, UK
https://www.triarchypress.net/walkingbodies.html
Project Initiated / as an outtake of Out of India Artist Collective.
Photo Credit / Harsh Bhavsar / Montage: Ishita Jain
Role / Performer, author
This Walk is conceptualised as a formalist performance. The performance is staged in an improvised theatre constructed for the walk. A camera is set to record the theatrical walk. Word-images are made to report to the cinematic record of the walk. The Walk, thus, becomes a transmedia Event.
Through the performance of this Walk, the Artist-scholar transforms. These transformations are generative, and iterative. They also dynamically change through space and time. The iterative dynamism is an “ouroboros infinity loop” of time and space. This infinity loop is mapped through the performative walk. This transformation of the walk to Event is a passage from text to record, through performance and re-performance.
| PASSAGE = THEATRE | THEATRE = SPACE FOR BEING + DOING |
| WALK THROUGH PASSAGE = BEING + DOING | PASSAGE = ARCHAIC DISCURSIVE SPACE
Verb-tenses:
INVOKE - WALK - MAKE
Proper nouns:
VENUSIAN - ARTIST-SCHOLAR - ELSE-WHERE
Time-senses:
FUTURAL - NOW - THEN
The settings of the stage are re-projected into a formalist layered stage-set. Three white screens are hung vertically, spaced apart in three directions such that the fragmentation of the surface create a space. The landscapes within which the walk is performed is re-projected within this formalist stage-set. This re-projection leads to a performative reading of the theatrical walk.
