Time as a Paradox
Perception of time refers to the sense of time, which is measured by someone’s own idea of duration of the indefinite and unfolding events. (Wikipedia.com) Perception of time is subjective and changes according to certain conditions and situations.
As a part of my course, I along with my batch mates had worked extensively on a piece of urban wasteland converting it into a community garden. The physical act of gardening and working together had helped us understand ourselves and our surroundings better. We started questioning and re-examining our practices that may have directly or indirectly impacted the environment.
The work on the piece of land according to me had been divided into two categories-
The duration of time spent mentally understanding and engaging with the land
and The duration of time spent physically understanding and working on the land.
This opened up several aspect of emotional and intellectual responses for me, therefore, in order to reflect this understanding I worked on a performance piece with the help of my fellow performer Sahil.
'Deeply reflective, these two artists create a landscape with unsettling imagery abstracting the brutality of the world and the nature of inner struggle. "Digging the land","Understanding the land" is the constantly evolving spiral presented in a study of contrasts from the outward in and the inward out. The resistance of the mind and the body's unwillingness to move rush to overwhelm our senses.
Catharsis has happened to all of us somewhere somehow perhaps within a small gesture, a twist of the torso or maybe when they distort dimensionality for us. Sahil merges into a roll of paper flattening out into 2D while Shivangi breaks up space-time into many dimensions with her brush strokes revealing layers of time, the interiority of space and the paradox of time.
Shivangi performs with her fearless, soft, intuitive, intrinsically meditative movements and spontaneous expressivity while Sahil performs with his swift strength snapping elbows knees and torso flung in a play of control and release at once critical, questioning purpose and action; land and time; memory and perception and creation and destruction.
The warps and wefts of a primordial life-thread arrive uninvited taking time away melding the one into the many, and a sound reverberates gracefully.'
- Sandhiya kalyanasundaram'
