Deepti Ramakrishnan Diploma Project Documentation 2015 Art in Transit
CONTENT SEMESTER ONE
MAPPING EXERCISES INITIAL SKETCHES INTRODUCTION TO SITE FORM INSPIRATION VISUALISATION JURY FEEDBACK
SEMESTER TWO
REVISITING THE SPACE GIRISH INITIAL BOOK CONCEPT PROBLEMS FACED CONVERSATIONS TO EXPERIENCES CODING THE TEXT PERSONAL ILLUSTRATIONS, QUOTES SPLICING EDITING THUMBNAILS FEEDBACK DUMMY BOOK: ANALOG VISUAL LANGUAGE EXAMPLES OF SPREAD PERSONAL NOTE
Mapping Exercises . Initial Sketches . Introduction to Site . Form . Inspiration . Visualisation . Jury Feedback
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INITIAL SKETCHES This is where I had the opportunity to get to know the Bangalore metro by getting introduced to the Peenya metro station. Our class was split into groups and each had to explore different parts of the metro station. This exercise personally made me get acquainted with the Peenya metro station
PEENYA MAPPING Many small shops on either sides of the road, not too much traffic, mostly taxis and trucks, very dusty, lots of greenery. After going and interviewing the shop keepers, I found that there are a different number of people who visit the different shops, the only thing that remains constant is the time that the crowd flows in during the course of the day which is 7:00 – 9:00 AM, 1:30 – 2:30 PM and then 7:00 – 9:00 PM. The idea then was to map the crowd at different points through the day.
INTRODUCTION TO SITE Peenya initially to me seemed almost deathly silent for an industrial area. There were faint noises of the humming of machines but no human interaction whatsoever. It would only get slightly populated during the breaks that the workers got during mealtimes and then go back to being silent and almost completely deserted.
I then found this pocket of a community that was filled with colour, with the sounds of women chattering, children playing, cows grunting, the general sounds of a busy community. There was a massive contrast between the bright colours and the humdrum of people going about their daily routines to the muted greys and the quiet humming of machines of the community’s surroundings. I found myself thinking, how did they get here? Why are they here? _____________________________________________________________________ side note: create visual language
I spent the first few hours just walking through these lanes and taking pictures and then stopped at a small tea stall for a break. I asked for a bottle of water and while the shopkeeper went to get the water, another man turned to me and asked where I was from. I replied telling him it was a college project and then I asked him about Peenya. He told me about how Peenya was not like this before. He had lived there since he was a child. He spoke to me about how before the highway and the metro came up, Peenya was a village filled with ragi fields. It was hard to believe, as what was left now were a few narrow lanes with buildings packed close to each other. He went on to say how they had to sell all their land to accommodate for the highway, and then more of it when the industries started to filter in. They were promised jobs, and they discussed it with their Panchayat and once having sold their land, they found themselves without any jobs, so most of them had to relocate and the few who remained either took up small businesses or had to travel to nearby industries to work as labourers. He didn’t sound too upset with what happened, he spoke about how the few that were still here were like family now.
I then started to create a variety of visual samples to test my style. I wanted it to be something that was my own, but at the same time could blend well with the mud paints I would be using. I wanted to create a narrative for the story and so I created a character: the storyteller, who would be the one who narrated this whole story of industrialisation taking over the community
Yusuke Asai Inspiration for this project stemmed from various sources of different artists working on various community based projects. One of the main sources of inspiration was a Japanese artist named Yusuke Asai, who went to The Niranjana school in Bihar and painted the walls using paint, leaves, dust and 7 different kinds of local mud. The artwork features tribal and organic patterns inspired by local art and culture. The Artist wished to bring the isolated members of the community closer through his art.
This project fuelled the idea for my mural. I initially wanted to do the entire mural using mud paints, the only difference being they would be permanent mud paints rather than temporary. I wanted to use mud to depict the roots of Peenya, using what is natural to the area to make a piece that symbolises the beauty of the community through their stories.
VISUALISATION
JURY FEEDBACK During our first semester jury I was told that I wasn’t using myself as a filter, rather I was just depicting what happened without taking a stand on it. I was being very objective about how I viewed the project and was not involved in the process at all. This was a turning point in my process and I wanted to come back and look at Peenya with fresh eyes. I was too stubborn about my mural and I needed to let go of it in order to get a new perspective on Peenya.
Revisiting the Space .Girish .Initial Book Concept
.Conversations to Experiences . Coding the Text . Personal Illustrations, Quotes Thumbnails
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Feedback
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Splicing. Editing. Dummy Book: Analog .
Visual Language . Spread Examples . Personal Note.
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REVISITING THE SPACE When I revisited the space when I came back, I wanted to keep an open mind and go there with no agenda. So I carried my camera and my notebook. There is a small space outside the community where the children play cricket. I went and sat nearby and started to observe them. Involuntarily I took out my notebook and started taking notes of them playing cricket, somewhat like running commentary. I noticed that even though I was an observer and not a participant, it affected the game. The boys would make exaggerated bowling movements with their arms and then turn to see me write it down and smile. I was so busy hurriedly scribbling notes that I didn’t notice a boy come sit next to me. Only once he tried peeking into my book did I jump a little and notice him.
GIRISH He introduced himself as Girish and asked me what my name was and what I was doing in Peenya. I realized that if I needed to keep coming back and talking to him I needed some sort of anchor that would make him want to engage in conversation with me every time I went back. I asked him if I could take a picture of him and he smiled warmly and posed for me. He spoke to me about school and his parents, his hobbies and his friends. I left feeling like I knew Peenya a little better. During my studio time, I started to draw the portrait, because it felt like I was making an attempt to get to know them rather than just going back with a printed photograph. Around the portrait I wrote the conversation that I had with him.
When I returned to Peenya I went over to find Girish to show him his portrait. I found him at the shop buying some supplies for his house. He turned around and smiled and waved. I showed him my book and before I knew what was happening he caught my arm and pulled me towards his house. He called out to his mother and she walked outside to see what all the commotion was about. She looked at me questioningly and when Girish showed her my book she started to laugh and turned to me and asked if I drew it myself. I said yes and was immediately welcomed into their house. They sat me down and Girish ran out to call his grandmother. I was overwhelmed by how they were so welcoming just because of a portrait. I was handed coffee and some biscuits. His grandmother then walked in. I smiled at her but she didn’t return the smile. She was looking at me sceptically. “Do you know Kannada?” I shook my head. “Tamil?” I nodded yes. She started asking me questions. What are you doing here, what business do you have in Peenya, which college are you from, what do you study, why do you need my grandson’s face, how long have you been in Bangalore...
When I said I had been in Bangalore for four years she made a face at me and said, “You have been here for four years and you don’t know Kannada?” “I know only one word.” “Which word?” “Gothilla” She laughed. This was the first time she smiled since she met me so I asked her if she would teach me Kannada. She said she would but it would depend on how long I was going to be in Peenya for. I asked if I could take her picture and she agreed, which I didn’t expect her to.
INITIAL BOOK CONCEPT Initially, when I completed the portraits, I felt that all the information and conversations I was having with people gathered so much research that the only way to do justice to all that information was through the form of a book. The concept was about how these portraits inevitably formed connections between each other and how someone from the first page could be connected to someone on the sixtieth page and they in turn were connected to more people. It was about the complex web of narratives that would form as I kept having these conversations with people My intention was to create a book that very straightforwardly documented people’s activities, but that’s not what it was supposed to accomplish. What it was accomplishing is that it represented, without summarizing, without simplifying, a complex and dynamic web of life. What this form of a cross-indexed book full of visual note making did is that it did a better job of documenting the intricate cross connections and the non-linearity and the multi-dimensionality of collective life than other media. I had intended to document real conversations just as they are not to inform, but to show that it’s possible to represent them in their original form, in all their glorious detail, and still recreate an overall experience that can usually only be lived.
PROBLEMS FACED, MOVING FORWARD Soon these conversations were happing within one particular family. This family soon created a somewhat sensitive bond and were refusing to allow me to go to other houses to meet more people, rather they said that they would call others home which inevitably never ended up happening. This then led to me not being able to draw more portraits and I was feeling stuck and needed to find a process and use this setback to my advantage rather than consider it a disadvantage.
CONVERSATIONS BECOMING EXPERIENCES I started documenting the conversations that I had with this family but made sure to document it only within my studio time because I wanted to experience those conversations and not have a journalistic documentation. I didn’t take a notebook or a sound recorder along, as I knew that that would affect the nature of the conversation. During one of my visits, one of the women asked, “Why don’t you wear earrings?” “I don’t know, I don’t like them” “Can I give you a set to try on now?” “Sure.” She went to find a pair and came back with a chain and a bindi. “See you’ll look so nice if you wear all this.” I smiled at her and she suddenly asked, “You want to wear a sari?” “Why not,” I said, smiling. She ended up helping me wear a sari and then took a picture of me. I feel like the nature of these conversations would have been very different and this experience would have never happened if I had gone there with a sound recorder or a notebook. It felt more personal to go there and experience these instances personally.
CODING THE TEXT As I was using my studio time to write my text I started to code it: ** - Thoughts while in Peenya () - Thoughts while writing. {} - Insert picture
SPLICING, EDITING THE TEXT At the end of my research process, I had a very journalistic form of documentation, which I didn’t necessarily want to follow for the book. I wanted to break these experiences away from their beginnings and end so that the reader will experience these situations rather than just read them as diary entries. I used a technique called splicing where I took snippets of text from different experiences and juxtaposed it with my personal thoughts and illustrations so as to create a flow of these experiences.
THUMBNAIL GENERATION Once all the content was spliced the next task at hand was to create thumbnails for each spread. This is when the book started to slowly come together and it gave me a better sense of how the book would flow from one page to the next. Once this was done, I had a few meetings with faculty, to review the content and the basic outline of the book.
MEETINGS, FEEDBACK
Meeting 1: Can you incorporate the metro in some ways like through a map? Or overlay it in the background of one of the spreads. Change the ending. The whole book talks about being open to the experiences and it ends with trying to have control over an experience. It’s a very unrelated ending. Is it important to know the context of the story? Do people need to know that these experiences happened in Peenya? Do the readers need to know who you are? Meeting 2: Dummy copy. Printing related concerns. Are you using colour? Or will it be black and white? What type? Handwritten? Change the ending. It’s unrelated to the rest of the book. Meeting 3: Does the reader need to know who you are? Does the reader need to know this happened in Peenya? Does this have to be connected to the metro? Don’t force the connection between the metro and the book.
INFLECTION Up until this point, I was worried about how I would tie this book back to the Peenya Metro project. The feedback I got made me realise that Peenya was the base of my project and that was enough and I need not necessarily tie back the book to that space. As this book was all about shared human experiences and about how these experiences go beyond the boundaries of class and place, I didn’t have any obligation to tie it back to Peenya or try to force the metro and Peenya into the book. From this point, I had to start creating a dummy copy.
STYLE EXPERIMENTS Once the dummy was created, I started to experiment with different styles to see what would compliment the content. After experimenting with different media, I decided that ink work in black and white and different spreads with block ink and others with stippling would go best with the content.
FINAL NOTE This book has been a whirlwind of emotions for me (something I don’t usually like to dwell on). It changed from being a project to living the experience. I was no longer going there to get research, I genuinely wanted to go spend time with that community. It has taught me so much, at times made me feel so overwhelmed but I have loved every single minute of it. I am so thankful that the beauty of this book is how it is never ending and I will always have the option to just come back and pick up where I left off. Thank you.