Seiji Shimoda's Performance at KIPAF 15

Neha Tickoo's Report

There is something omnipresent about the newspaper. And it is reluctantly and relentlessly so. We can say that the whole gamut of information industry is ubiquitous and even though we have stepped deep into the virtual world of consuming multitudes of information, the newspaper is still held dear in its very irrefutable materiality. Perhaps it is this all-pervasiveness of the printed word that gets imitated by the virtual proliferation of textual information. Then, the tangible and locally available newspaper can become a potent object to be manipulated through performance. Seiji Shimoda, an artist from Nagano, Japan, merely uses this newspaper and sellotape to create this piece of work.

Seiji enters the same venue, the vast ground in front of Victoria Memorial armed with his bundle of newspapers and a roll of sellotape. Come to think of it, it is rather a common sight to find a foreigner with newspaper strolling into that space, outside the Victoria Memorial gate, a famous tourist spot in Kolkata. However, Seiji goes on to lay down his tools – one by one each sheet of the newspaper bundle is laid in front of him along while he strips off pieces of the sellotape for what is to come. Most often than not, newspapers in art have been amply used as cheap raw material to create new sub-objects, sometimes to impose or to be superimposed upon. What Seiji does with the newspaper is quite neat even while demonstrating the crisp fluidity of paper.

He begins by placing one sheet of paper in the middle of the audience- a collection of Pi members and artists among plenty of local people. He takes another full sheet of newspaper and with the help of sellotape, he attaches it to the newspaper sheet already placed there. He picks up the edge of this elongated narrow sheet of newspapers in his hands and raises it over his head letting rest of the paper fall on his back. After maintaining that particular crouching position for a while, he leaps forward, as far as he can, allowing the newspaper on his head flutter accordingly. When at his new position, he makes time to add another sheet of paper to this strip of newspapers and jumps back to his original position. Once again, he goes on to add another sheet of paper and repeats his leap, back and forth-ing between the two fixed but unmarked points, as the sheets go on to be added after each leap. He continues doing so until he transforms into a totally different creature and the strip of newspapers begins to look more like a long cape, a veil, a frog’s tongue also perhaps. Towards the end it becomes so elongated that he makes effort to collect the entire roll of newspapers in his hands over his head while ensuring a far reaching jump. The performance lasted a good 20-25 minutes and the strip of taped newspaper sheets must have become more than 10 feet long. Seiji ended it with crumble-folding the enormous strip back to himself while walking back into the crowd not letting the bundle away from him.

There are many images that shot up in my mind while Seiji performed this act among a curious audience. There are very anthropomorphic attributions with which one can look at Seiji’s work. In his acts of leaping, he transforms into a frog, with the same postures and the flying strip of newspaper become his tongue, which only shoots out and never retrieves back, following him wherever he jumps off to. His movements slowed down a bit as he was extremely careful of laying down his tool in order. I could then find time to read what the newspaper offered in the fleeting “in-between” moments. It was of course one of leading English newspapers of the country and what flashed were the news headlines like “Can USA be an All-weather Friend?” and “Kolkata is No. 1 in Faking It.” Or the other side read, “Measures To Job Hunting”. Perhaps the tongue of the Frog was telling me what i wanted to read!

Neha ‘Zooni’ Tickoo is a dancer, a student of Performance and a poet hailing from Kashmir and based in Delhi. She dabbles in Art and Performance Writing. Some of her writing works can be accessed at www.zoonitickoo.blogspot.com and www.zooni-aloneinthewilderness.blogspot.com

Pavitra Mehta's piece at KIPAF 15

Pavitra Mehta's Performance @College Square - #kipaf15 Day 3

Neha Tickoo's Report

A performer, one who is able to make most of the stuff available in the environment is able to create works that may astound, and may create some effect in the heart and the mind of the onlooker. Pavitra chose to do her performance during evening of the third day of the KIPAF. She chose a rather unused space besides the abandoned pool. Just when it was her turn to perform, she was already among the audiences and she used Bhaskar Hazarika done up full in his regal attire complete with the silver foil mask as he ushered all the audiences beating a drum in a somber rhythm, drawing them closer with sufficient attention following. Interestingly, she had set up her performance venue in a circle, made out of broken discarded bricks she used as found objects. This circular formation had interesting effect on the way the audience arranged itself to watch the performance, a large semi-circle with enough space between her, seated in her circle of bricks and themselves. It looked as if a serious ritual would be executed by her as she placed herself in the middle of that circle and sat on her thighs. She did this after she removed her shoes, and so invariably it indicated sanctity of her chosen space of performance.

As she settled conveniently in the middle of the circle, the drumming stopped. Now the attention began concentrating towards the center of the circle. She had already placed a earthen pot of black colour near the edge of the circle. There was also red paint on her hands, which she brandishes at the audience and clearly showing as if revealing their emptiness and the colour. She had a brown paperbag kept besides her. She places the paperbag on her head and suddenly she transforms into a faceless creature.

The final and the most important stage in the performance was Pavitra picking up the paint brush from the earthen pot containing black paint and attempting to paint a face over the brown paper bag placed over her face and head. She began to superimpose suggestive dots on the brown paper bag indicating her eyes, her nose, and her mouth. Soon the paper bag began to get soggy but she continued to smear the wet black paint on the torn-at-places paper bag on her face. Simultaneously her face began to become visible. Occasionally she keeps flashing her red painted hands at the audiences, in slow movements. Finally the paper-bag is not able to hold itself due to excess sogginess and tears off. She tears off the paper and ends the performance.

All through the performance, I could get reminded of the performance of Olivier de Sagazan’s ‘Transfiguration’[1]. This performance involves, on a much deeper level, the idea of physical appearance and its transformation. Sagazan uses clay as a tool to transform his physical appearance, and with this wet clay he moulds and re-moulds into different creatures like a woman, with ravaged hair, a man with enormous phallus, or sometimes into an alien, a predator. He becomes as grotesque as possible but all the time he is amply recognizable as we go on recollecting and recognizing the dynamics played by the clay on his physical being. Paritrahere, seemingly does not aim for radical transformation of this measure but there are some structural similarities, which cannot be denied, even though these similarities may perhaps be attributed to chance entirely! However, the way she sits in the circle, or the way she places the pot of black paint in front of her and the use of clayey coloured paper bag on her head, the urge to depict a face over the paper bag, and culmination with eventual rupture of the soggy paper bag become essential indicators that compel one to make mention of Sagazan’s work in order to look at Pavitra’s performance. One can at least say that Pavitra seems inspired by Sagazan’s work invariably, but in the content and the motives of her performance, however, she is not able to imitate what Sagazan achieves. Rather she sets up an altogether different tone and mood for maybe different purpose entirely, which, I believe, will be more visible to anyone unaware of Sagazan’s work altogether.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gYBXRwsDjY