The Transparent Performer III: a
Reflection. (on the work of Zuleikha Chaudhary)
The physical
world we inhabit is not very complex. We have by and large made sense of this
world by numerous, infinite light rays falling, clashing, reflecting on and
from objects. Sense perception like sight responds to this very physical
principle and thus we see the world as it is. We perceive dimensions of height
depth and distance acutely to comprehend space and make decisions about it.
Hence, we can say that we are also limited in access of knowledge, and there is
only so much we can gather, be it from our immediate surroundings or to the
farthest wide cosmos. It is an opaque world we live in. There is nothing much
complicated about its opacity and i say this with certain nonchalance. This
nonchalance I draw from under the covers of intellectual imaginative faculties
that homo sapiens possess. Beneath this cover, we are mammals going about our
lives with objective ease even in our savagery.
Through this
larger lens of nonchalance, i am at a risk of being labelled as a pessimist
anti-humanist. However, having said that, human being has hinged forever now to
the unseen, imaginative and to the metaphysical. We cultivate a culture to
ponder upon what may lie ‘beyond’. The tendency of human brain, in its highest
intellectual capacity is that it inevitably tries to problematize the simple,
and simplify the complex, only to garner on subjectivity. To decipher the
truth, the absolute knowledge, then appears as a false propaganda with which
humans have nevertheless been obsessed with and will continue to be. In other
words, there just cannot be one single mode of looking and understanding.
Zuleikha
Chaudhary’s latest work “The Transparent Performer” is a speculation on similar
lines. About this work, there is an uncertainty that seems to lurk in the wings
back-stage and makes sure not become overtly visible. While i am in attendance
of her work, i can hear something playing in my head: “Duniya bane waale, kya tere mann mai samaayi, kaahe yeh duniya
banaayi?!” (maker of the world, what transpired in your head that you
created this world as it is?!). I have confessed earlier to the nonchalant
point of view regarding the objective world we live in. But the parallel world
Zuleikha had set up in this work, i ended up being not only curious but in awe.
Of course, in performance history, there have been registered major shifts
focusing from elaborate mise-en-scene towards corporeality of the performer,
from it’s ability to act and to move, from baroque to grotesque. Hence, what
Zuleikha proposes in “Transparent Performer” is radical in that she is able to compose a
work with alternative concept of a ‘performer’ and space. Here too, she
strictly maintains that her work should not indicate that she abhors the actors
and performers, but her investigation moves along a different track of
conceptual questions. So, i could not help but pop the question at her too:
‘What was she thinking? How does she generally think?’ Despite all this,
Zuleikha insists that it is above all a performance. It comes across as a
massive installation piece, although Zuleikha obviously defines it as
performance since she clearly demarcates herself as a theatre director. In a
conceptual work such as this, with no live bodies in performance, she also
agreed that expectations by herself as a director function on different levels.
Perhaps she dealt with the carpenters and other helpers the way she works with
actors, and so, performance was occurring on many different various levels even
before the show dates. These are speculative thoughts that a spectator may only
be able to indulge in retrospect, conceivably after investing considerable
interest.
So how does
one read this work? Atleast in this case, artistic articulation depends on the
intent of the artist and thus plays the primary role. But to a spectator who is
not initiated into art, would it be a folly to simply look at it as an art
installation. Not entirely, I believe. Intent of artist may have have been
fore-grounded but it cant become domineering in reading this or any piece of
art. Perhaps still, Zuleikha’s emphasis on the work being called as a
performance helps the viewer to look at the artwork in completely different
light. All in all, these negotiations, then form a curious mix leading to
interpret her art.
Being an
early bird on the closing day of the exhibit, i was able to dedicate a good
amount of time and attention to the sprawl in and around the building. I am
talking about time when very few visitors were present. Visitors arriving later
found themselves intrigued by the grand structure and few of them wanted to
know where and how to enter the building from and where the ‘performance by
Zuleikha’ was taking place. I found such questions amusing yet couldn’t have
helped knowing how straight-jacketed and objective human perception has become.
It also provided me with moments to retort back in quips which culminated in
casual chatter amidst the presence of the grandiose surrounding us. However,
there was another moment which seemed to alienate me from this flow of
experiencing. I remember having felt an urge to relieve myself and looking for
a restroom. Instantaneously, i wondered if the walls of the restroom inside the
same building were designed/wrecked in similar fashion. I chuckled to myself
thinking so, but thankfully i found one fit to be used. Such speculation, such
need to think over and over again about the functionality of a building in a
cityscape made me realize that i was quite familiar with this experience and
yet caught unawares.
Looking at
the window panes, at the illuminated wooden structure, at careful cuts made in
the thick walls of the building and then eventually discovering stairs to the
next floor replete with text and still more illuminated wooden rods was adding
further to explorations. I was able to feel an uncanny presence of the
transparent performer, and therefore maybe naively so, i was inclined to
consider the building as a house. It was an eerie feeling, to say the least.
The “text” seemed to know that i would be there. The architecture of that house
screamed to me in that encounter as if providing me with information just like
humans go into outer space to seek information, in exploration and in
discovery.
photo by: Shovan Gandhi
The analogy
of cosmos is not a far-fetched one. Come to think of it, how can one look at
the whole cosmos as a performance? Who is the performer and who is the
spectator? To witness the performance of the universe, the spectator needs to
pay a visitation and be among the innumerable light rays. Talking then of
cosmos, the duality of timespace continuum is how Zuleikha also describes the
event of a performing body into a performance space. Over a brief conversation
with her she explained that it is the very presence and non-presence of the
performer that she dabbles with. According to her the three-dimensional space that
a performing body or non-body permeates into, is the subject matter that
interests her the most. She laid emphasis on the fact of experientiality which
is what she has tried to expound on in this art-work.
Rightly so,
“The Transparent Performer” develops an ambiance of building’s architecture for
a spectator into a performance along with the fourth dimension of ‘time’.
Perhaps then, it will be fruitful to delve a bit more on the “transparent”
aspect of this performance/artwork. Interestingly, one is reminded of how Susan
Sontag[1]
described Jorge Luis Borges as “the least egocentric and the most transparent
of writers”. It is remarkable how the term transparent is implemented by Sontag
and then intentionally here one can juxtapose it with Zuleikha’s transparent
performer. It might very well come across as outrageous to bring about such a
co-relation for an argument’s sake. However, Borges from his book ‘Labyrinths’ in the essay called ‘A New Refutation Of Time’[2],writes:
“In the course of a life dedicated to
letters, and at times to metaphysical perplexity, i have glimpsed and foreseen
a refutation of time, [which] is found in some way or other in all of my books”.
He adds later on, “The denial of time
involves two negations: the negation of the succession of the terms of a
series, negation of the synchronism of the terms in two different series. In
fact if each term is absolute, it’s relations are reduced to the consciousness
that those relations exist.” Further down the essay he adds: “Via the dialectics of Berkely (idealism) and
Hume, i have arrived at Schopenhauer’s dictum: ‘the form of phenomenon of will
is really only the present, not future, nor the past”. And yet, in
summation he exclaims that “Time is the
substance i am made of. Time is the river which sweeps me along but i am the
river[...] The world unfortunately is real”.
There are
several moments while reading Borges in this essay that one experiences similar
transcendence that one might when entering Zuleikha’s artwork. Timespace is
then the core of understanding the triangulation between cosmos, the Refutation
of Time, and the Transparent Performer. From expounding on ‘time’ to moving
into collapsing it through a “transparent” entity into the cauldron of warped
experiential present, one is only then able to situate oneself in a certain
time frame, only to dissipate it further. This particular perspective cannot be
an end in itself too and thus, it would be only customary here to conclude with
a full stop, which is not an end, but in fact a mere dot in time.
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