DIPLOMA PROJECT DOCUMENTATION
PROJECT BRIEF ‘Art in Transit’ is a live undertaking by the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology for the BMRC and will focus on the Peenya Metro station as a pilot project. The project offers the participant and opportunity to be a part of the creation of an immersive art and design experience that marks the location of the station and its architecture. The larger objective of the project is to develop cultural links between the different locations through interactive means creating new shared experiences for the city.
BEGINNING Trying to make sense of the world is inherent human nature. We have an immediate impulse to understand everything that is around us. In doing so our surroundings become more accessible to us andwe feel safer. Existence thus feels a little absurd since we are constantly finding logic and meaning in our living while simultaneously life is throwing numerable instances at us that do not make any sense. Coming from a non-art background and having an ability to paint had always kept me in a state of curiosity about the visual world. My approach to viewing and making was influenced by the images created by those around me, before my journey as an art and design student began. I was a part of that ‘general public’ that accessed image through a certain kind of sensibility. This sensibility that I speak of is that of trying to find order in chaos, always trying to understand an image. The appreciation of an image came from how well I could figure out the story it was telling. The practice of design thus served me well when I started out as a student. There were intuitive processes that were always grounded in factual research. There were problems to be tackled, and design as a tool helped in creatively solving these problems. My interest lay in social design, visual communication and design as a research methodology. My past projects with the LED lab (law environment and design lab) inculcated a view of design that I was quite unaware of before entering the threshold of this field. What design provided me with was a context to work with creatively. To approach context visually has always been my point of interest.
While working with the Maldharis (a tribal community) in Kutch, I developed a grasp of how design can be used to build bridges, between law and environment as well as, for a community
Working with landscapes in the Western Ghats, I used design as way of re-imaging already existing paradigms of looking at things. The challenge lay in using design as a way of establishing new research and insights, whilst relying on first-hand information.
I slowly discovered my interest in storytelling through visuals and developing narratives. I worked with introspective narratives with respect to Partition and violence as it was represented in the memory of my family and my recent past.
Also a work in progress, which is a personal project of mine, is a narrative about how urban citizens perceive instances of daily lives and politics, layered with sarcasm and humour.
oh that reminds me... SHITHIL! Could you make a sandwich as well? And don’t put mayo like you put in yours.
watching my middle a little.
Thul can you please help me with something.
oh not falling into that one Shil. Just get your sandwich here too and meet Jay.
Shil is my love but he doesn’t like me saying it front of others. Watch as he comes...
As a creative practitioner, my journey began with wanting to do graphic design. Along the way, my work ethic evolved to include more subjective interdisciplinary work, with the focus shifting from the outside to within myself. Having previously engaged with communities in tribal, forest context, I felt that my next step should be to engage with an urban context. This was further reinforced with the fact that one of my preceding projects was a take on urban citizens. Art in transit presented me with an opportunity to to explore art, but not in an exhibitory sense per se, but something that was accessible to and engaging with the common man. Hence, this project seemed to be the natural progression my graph as a creative practitioner. Through the course of this project, I found myself forced to grapple with processes that in my more design-based thinking, I had never encountered before. One of these was to create work that is evocative rather than only problem-solving.
ESTABLISHING CONTEXT
lenses to look at station/Peenya
engaging with the metro Lens of advertisement/ Written Material
Promise made to Urban Population
Waiting W
rhythm of architecture Material Aspiration
Contrast Pace of City Life Interior vs Exterior Necessity vs Luxury
Kabir
Mental Journey v/s Physical J
While Outside
Journey
PROCESS Waiting
Waiting While Travelling
The project was interspersed with several miniassignments throughout. Many of these exercises gave root to the ideas that eventually became a larger part of the project. Here is a mind-map to visually depict these connections and by extension, the relationship between the many observations and thoughts that fed into my final process.
Tools Used To Explore Themes 1. Mapping Exercises in mapping were undertaken with subjective lenses to understand a space. My mapping of Peenya was done through the lense of advertisements. This led me to understand the space in terms of what services or products that the occupants of that space were being promised.
2. Direct Observation This gave me a lot of content and scenarios to work with and helped get a sense of the surrounding in a space of transit.
Inside the metro ‘The compartment is full of men except for one woman. They look out of the window when the train stops at a station. One man gets up and leaves- shades, earphones plugged in another man looks really old. Ones travelling in groups are talking to the people in their groups. They say something about the station everytime the metro stops at that particular station. One old man is sitting facing the window. A young girl entered the train. She is wearing a red top. She is fair. The older lady is wearing a yellow silk saree. The train is practically empty. The guy with the yellow check shirt, black sunglasses, blue and red chappal, with yellow band, is clicking selfies with his friend. Two other guys in the compartment on their phone. The guy with the yellow shirt talks and is gesturing with his hands. Keeps shifting his body posture. Wearing a watch with a big round dial. Another girl entered the train. She is wearing shades too. The guy with the yellow shirt takes his glasses off and sits with his legs crossed over the other. Bites his lips, plucking at his foot. His friend looks like Malinga’
Outside the sandal soap factory metro station ‘The structure of the metro station is a little different than the others. Multiple exits. Two exits opposite to each other and one exit on the side of the Metro complex, towards orion mall. Heavy traffic characterises this space. Buses, cars, 2 wheelers, auto rickshaws, the pillars of the train line are loaded with advertisements of soaps, incense, detergents. The structure of the staircase that leads towards Orion Mall, has a peculiar architecture. The stair case walkway is covered. Little shops of fruits and golgappas, cigarette etc are scattered around the park that centres itslf between the station, Orion Mall, Big Bazaar.
Engaging with a passenger on the M.g road line In my engagement with a passenger she told me the things she over hears while travelling in a metro. She said she would many times pick up on words that were being dropped here and there and once the word despair caught her attention. She said she would like to strike up conversations with people but more often than not they are in a sort of a bubble. She also talked about the hesitation of people when they are amidst strangers. For example a guy in the train was extremely thirsty and waited 20 minutes before he could ask her for water. Many times she has wished that she could jump into a conversation, like one that was happening about the best eating places in banglore.
Jayanagar Market: Near the bus stop The market is still opening. Shutters going up, cars buzzing, screeching, autos lining up. People are getting by. 2 scooters passed by with 2 families- husband, wife and about two children, sometimes 4 sometimes 3 on one. Men are carrying piles of cloth tied up in one piece. I am sitting with a group of strangers on a bench under a huge tree. What tree I can’t figure out. Its branches are spread very wide. I can hear the sounds of hacking metal- as if some construction work is going on. Lot of middle aged to old men sitting on the bus stop that is right next to me. They are familiar with each other and seem to getting along well. They are discussing things in kannada and waiting for their bus. One is talking on the phone. The autowala in front of me is sitting in his auto and reading his paper. A lady comes to him and asks for a ride. The autowala folds the paper and takes off. The two women sitting next to me just left. A man passed by with a decorated bull. One old uncle seems to have a lot of aquaintances sitting around here. He seems to go bench to bench talking to people. He doesn’t seem to have come to catch a bus. Women with children, women with husbands, basically women with their families. A ringing sound catches my attention. A man sitting right under the tree is listening to the radio. A fruit vendor. His stall has a peculiar sort of fruit and it has ber. He has left to go somewhere and a lady instead is doing some transaction. Another woman from the peanuts stall comes to chat with her. The men sitting next to me are talking about various things.
3. Sketching Observation through sketching led to understanding overt expression of what people’s experience of travelling in a metro or for the purpose of study for this project , even at a bus stop would be. Busy market places, bus stands and insides of the metro station provided rich understanding of gestures and expressions, movements and quirky aspects in people’s daily lives.
Sketches at Peenya
Sketches at Trinity station
Sketches at Peenya
4. Metaphors Building metaphors helped me explore my own thoughts and expression in response to direct observations and deepened my understanding of approaching ideas in an intuitive and poetic fashion.
Ideas that emerged Waiting When visiting the station again, I was a little curious about the people who stood there outside the station. What were they doing? They seemed to be waiting. Waiting for what I speculated. even while I was doing my sketches, a few people around me, were just standing, looking at their phone ( checking the time maybe) or talking to someone, giving direction (sometimes taking them), in short they were waiting for someone to come/ meet or go to them. Having experienced this wait quite a number of times myself, I wondered about how we feel about waiting in a space like this. Noisy, fast paced and yet the time just doesn’t seem to move quickly. The number of cars just seem endless as they pass you by, while you wait... for your meeting, your friend, your lover, etc etc. So I sat there. For quite sometime. I wanted to see how this passage of time would feel to me if I did not have any particular engagement with anyone or anywhere. And as jarring and painful (not physically no!) as this waiting seemed to be in the beginning, slowly the monotony, the boredom just drifted. There was no impending work or urgency for me to be anywhere. The time seemed to flow, in a slow and steady pace, while I stood there waiting (for nothing).Thus I arrived at this particular metaphor. The form of representation is not very explorative, however the image conveys what I felt. This is not to generalise the experience of waiting in anyway. This was just my experience. The lines that collapse into each other and kind of obstruct each others way, slowly open up, with the feet standing, trying to penetrate staying still and slowly these lines just flow, like water, each moment being new and yet passing you by and your feet stand still, waiting.
Kabir and reflections on the pace of city life Engaging with the Kabir project( led by Shabnam) to delve into this idea of waiting and the idea of mental journeys v/s a physical one, was a milestone in my process of exploring the experience of waiting.. The themes that unravelled through Kabir’s poetry, like alienation, unbelonging, loss and death (literal and metaphorical), floating through life without absorbing in the waters of experience, never really dipping our feet into this river, but just crossing its breadth from one bank to the other. What is this experience of life, being in a space defined by geographical boundaries and then being in a place, defined by purpose, memories, and relationships? Trying to belong but not quite there. Wakefulness and an unconscious drifting through life is what resonated with me. City life to me seems very characteristic of this contradiction. Our journeys are more often than not spent in a sleep, where we want to avoid the monotony of travel and just reach the destination. “be awake, the thieves are coming to plunder this city of your body” Rush is the nature of a big city life. The pace is everything. We want to get to our destination faster. And the destination can be anything, it could be physical and outside one’s self like Your job, your home, that movie theatre, an important meeting. Or it could be something internal like a relationship, material goals that you want to achieve, finding love, finding a family, buiding a character. We all have destinations and we all have stops on the way. There is a now and there is tomoro and in between is life. What is a journey? From point A to point B? Is it a passage of time, a shift in geographical surroundings, is it affective, is it tangible ? What is it character? What is its experience? Could you have made the journey internally and not externally? Or both? Does physical wandering align with mental wandering? Is all journey and wandering resolute, or is it aimless. I mean all of this really depends on the traveller. So who is this person? what does this person want? what are his/ her dreams, hopes, aspirations?
Insights Into Peenya Peenya is an emerging industrial region. Its dry and rugged, dusty and mechanical. Its still not thronged by commuters the way metro stations are in other cities (this can be said for the Metro rail in general in Banglore). Very few people are using it as of now. There is an element of curiosity and excitement for the commuters as of now. Which is eventually fated to turn to mundane and routine travel? The scale of the station perhaps in some way reflects the aspirations of this region (and maybe the city as a whole). The high ceilings and vast hallways create a sense of grandeur. At the same time makes one feel extremely small. Transit is a space for moving through; a space to make a journey and this journey is often towards specific goals. Whether it is to get to their workspace, to meet a friend, to spend time with family, to see a destination, the transit is rarely a place for stopping and is usually a passing through. It is barely a destination. The traveller in this process is often hurried and detached from the journey. The journey however long or short does not really matter to him/her. They are looking elsewhere, avoiding eye contact, ear phones plugged in, waiting for the train to take them to their respective destination and let the journey pass them in a blur. The passage of time, the wait for your destination, marks a mental journey that may or may not contrast with the traveller’s physical journey. There seems a tension in the traveller’s journey. It’s a tension between waiting and rushing through, transit and destination, impatience and relief, between the mental journeys and the physical journey that the traveller makes. I dwelled upon the contrast between being present in two different spaces at the same time in a place of transit (being mentally elsewhere while physically being in transit). And this came from personal experience and observation. At this point I found Kabir’s poetry to be inspiring. The analogy of the musk deer, intoxicated by the smell of musk, roams around the jungle looking for it, never realising that the musk is within his naval, seemed to resonate with the restlessness and ever increasing pace of urban life. This lay the ground for inspiration.
I did not however aim at a direct translation of the text from Kabir onto the site I was grappling with a depiction of this tension and conflict between the hurried journeys and impatience that it brings along with a probable boredom that leads to and escapism that the traveller seeks behind their headphones or mental escapes. I was also constantly thinking about what does the metro represent for the people of this city, infact what did peenya represent for the city of Banglore. Peenya, marks that aspect of growth and development that the city and even the country is trying to move towards head on. In such a scenario when the entire city is journeying towards a goal of success, a dream of an advanced and better built city (and life) does the traveller have time to pause for a moment? Do they (have the opportunity to) look and ponder over little things in life that miss their attention in this fast moving pace of city life.
BUILDING AN IMAGE
The first step was to select site. This particular site excited me because it was right at the threshold of the hurried passengers waiting to make their journey and the already travelling ones to get out to their destination. All that was now occupying my mind was how to construct an image that would stay with these passengers who barely had time to stop and ponder. The idea of material aspirations was taking different shapes. As mentioned earlier I had an unwillingness to engage with the text from Kabir’s poetry directly or even a visual translation of it. Text for me stood as a scaffold on which I built my image. Although an imagery has the potential to be more accessible when layered with, I wanted to refrain from doing so. I wanted to create an imagery that while being accessible to the audience also lends itself open to interpretation. I wanted the audience to be able to know what is there in the image yet be baffled by, to be understood yet surprise them everytime, to make sense and still not make sense. Through a number of iterations I was trying to achieve objects or metaphors that can reflect the sense of rush and chaos in a way that the image evokes a sense of absurdity yet the elements look more and more what people have seen before. It started with a ladder and the ladder standing as a metaphor for climbing up in material life, or reaching out for something. I then started thinking of objects and aspects of an urban lifestyle that these objects could reflect. What could be used to talk about relationships or bonding or even marriage, what could be used to talk about education, and even in what ways do I want to use these objects? Consequently the cup becoming one such vehicle that carried with itself the connotations of bonding, or friendship, companionship, of most basic things such as being something one starts their morning with- a cup of coffee or tea gearing you up for the rest of the day. This cup became a metaphor, that showing people running endlessly in a cycle. This extended to Food which I chose as a vehicle to carry these connotations/metaphors because it is one of the basic requirements for existence. But not just that, Food extends to have larger connotations of bonding and establishing relationships, of being a family(providing for meals, sitting and eating as a family), also culture and social status
Studies of site: Site selected adjacent to the platform
Studies of site: Understanding the flow of movement.
Exploring Ladders as a metaphor.
The Exhibition While practicing art in a public domain one must never forget that art has to come for the public by a section of this public. And by that I mean the wealthy who are willing to invest in the efforts of humble art practitioners (or sometimes not so humble) to make their contributions. A public exhibition gave me and many others who are part of this project to really understand the constraints, the pressure and the learning that comes while preparing to get people interested in your work. The beauty of a public art project is that it cannot be art for art’s sake. It must make its impact in the public domain, it has to excite, move, surprise, or evoke the audience in any which way that it aims to or it will not last. This exhibition provided us a chance to prototype our pieces in the space that we had selected. The course of this public exhibition of work in progress tested out my material approach to image making. In the creation of this image I worked with a collage technique of image making. I created all the elements separately and then scanned and photo shopped them together. Walter Benjamin, in his essay titled art in the age of mechanical reproduction has said “Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.� and enhancing the techniques of composing an image. This ritual as it turned out could have emancipated my image and the mechanical reproduction however brought in result quite contrary to my expectations. What worked as a part of this process was on site sketching (and not just at the peenya metro station, but at other places of transit like bus stops or even yeshwantpur railway station) what did not work was many a times sitting and waiting for inspiration to strike and have a mental image made before a physical one was sketched out. Most of the times simply starting out with sketching the objects and just letting go as the lines flowed, helped create imagery that was useful. The more I thought the less I did, so resorting to onsite sketching and some sort of free association drawing helped keep the ball rolling. Throughout this exhibition I have experienced a severe sense of worthlessness in my work and image making and fear overwhelmed me at several points and I would stop drawing.
After a prolonged state of inadequate production, I went back to simply sketching on site and making notes. Spontaneous image making helped me create some substantial amount of images that I could work with. Therefore engaging and persisting with ideas worked even though I did not know where it might lead. Creating imagery bit by bit and letting a theme unfold in the process worked. Compositionally, working with layers was helpful and so I used gateway sheets. Studying certain artists gave me a lot to work with. Artists like Bosch and Bruegel, and also Mario Miranda, helped me build a foundation for use of objects and situations to create absurdity and surprise. I studied the use of objects and their transformation in Bosch’s Garden of earthly delights, and composition of scenes from everyday lives of common peasants in Bruegel’s The Harvesters, and several cartoons of Mario Miranda which were like visual satires on city dwellers in places like Bombay and goa. Sharing my images-in progress with peers and faculty resulted in valuable inputs and helped in developing insights I also looked up various other artists like Escher, and Henri Toulouse, for studies in colour and composition, and their themes of everyday events layered with a twist in reality.
Iterations of elements for the mural
A section of the mural, rendered, printed and hung on site.
Visualisation of the lined draft of the mural on site.
What I can say was challenging or things that formed a pitfall for me was not keeping enough time for execution. My biggest learning from this exhibition had been that there is a long way between making drafts on paper and then executing them on the scale that has been proposed. Also to rely on my strength of drawing by hand rather than leaving large scale production to a mechanical process over which I would have little control or not have powerful enough machine to execute, is something I learnt the hard way. I realised that there needs to be more than enough time left for postproduction so that there is buffer to fix things and give finishing touches. Therefore reaching beyond my capacity to physically produce an art work in the time limit that I had is something I felt was challenging and I could have worked out better. Also relying on something that came naturally to me (painting/ drawing by hand) would have been a better decision, and not let the scale v/s time limit aspect overwhelm me could have worked out better. A disposition that I realised through the process of this exhibition that I would like to work more on will be fine-tuning
Post-Exhibition My biggest challenge was losing control to printing. The image could have had different approach, texture, colour and a sense of control had it been worked by hand. Thus experimentation in size, scale, colour and composition in response to site by hand was required. Therefore I selected a wall in Self finance society in Yelahanka and set out on the task of painting a mural on it.
Selecting the site for a mural.
Process and challenges The process involved convincing the owner and having a dialogue with her as to what is it that she would like to see. An orchid enthusiast, the owner maintained a beautiful lush garden in her house and owned a business of selling phalaenopsis orchids. In responding to this site things that I kept in mind was, how to make the image blend in with the surroundings rather than stand out. How can the owner’s garden and her interests in orchids be made a part of that wall that is blank to strangers. Could the character of the wall be reflective of the person living within it as well as the one painting it? Keeping these things in mind I decided to extend the lushness of her garden to the outside. another decision I made was to incorporate a tree into this mural in the remembrance of the tree that was right next to it as it was soon to be cut down. Another thing I wanted to incorporate into the mural was a sense of playfulness and depth. The process of painting the mural outside posed a few challenges. First of all was the rain that relentlessly stalled the progress while painting. The ground would get mucky and smell. The work was under constant scrutiny by people who passed me by. Some were thrilled, some curious, some quite opinionated about the aesthetics of the piece and some just walked by. The height of the wall could not be taken up fully due to lack of higher ladders.
Learning The site also provided ground for some experimentation. I tried to experiment with creating a water colour effect which wasn’t as successful. But working with emulsion paints and such scale by hand for the first time laid ground for learning. I used architectural elements of the house and extended it in the mural. The colour palette was chosen to blend in the surroundings. The style emerged as the image was worked upon. The constraints of the materials used guided a lot of decisions when it came to style. I also made a conscious choice of trying to mimic nature in most parts of the mural, for it to give an illusion of being real and really draw the onlooker into the piece. Artistically speaking this piece provided me with complete control over the image. My decisions evolved and the composition extended in response to site. A few points of learning that I gathered were with respect to light and shadow, planning the mural better and having a better estimation of time with respect to execution. When working with visual imagery and trying to create a sense of ‘reality’ the play of light and shadow cannot be ignored. It contributes to bringing all the elements in a piece together and creates depth in a 2d plain in such a magical way that has the potential to lure the audience inside it. Light and shadow as I have understood is a crucial way to bring together the elements in my draft of the mural for Peenya as well. The collage technique can thus create and image that is more approachable and believable if it gives the sense of reality in the fullest way.
MY LEARNING AS AN ARTIST
As an aspiring artist stepping into the world of public art I have realised that there are two kinds of public art practices. One in which the art is given to the public- it has the mark of the artist and sits in a space for people to absorb (or not), and the other that comes from an engagement of the public into the artist’s work, where the audience has a say in what they would like to see and also how they become a part of the piece. Art making in a public context requires the removing of the self from the centre of one’s work. In my understanding the artist becomes an agent, an intermediate force that helps develop a body/ piece of work that the public may eventually live their life in. making art for me has been an experience quite different from what I have been. This being my first engagement with public art, I kept questioning my assumptions about the public. If I am depicting a person a certain way, then am I assuming too much in terms of what goes on in his head? The project allowed me use my own intuition to make such assumptions, while also reiterating that in a space so subjective, there is no right or wrong when it comes to the inner contents of a person’s head! This personal struggle that carried on for almost throughout the project, constantly taking me out of comfort zone of trying to create visually accurate art, to art that speaks using the language of metaphors. As a practitioner, a project with an audience as multi-faceted yet generic as the Public (commuters of the Metro), allowed me to see the audience itself as one living, breathing organism. The challenge then became retaining this multiplicity while maintaining the audience as one entity. In dealing with this duality, I came to realize how one person’s journey, doesn’t matter who, can resonate with an entire people. In one sense, this allowed me to map motifs that are as common as they are unique. Examples of some of these motifs are: the aspiration for a better life, the rushed pace of everyday existence, the recurrence of longing and loss in relationships.
Along the way, I also started to see a framework forming for myself in terms of what art is to me. I started giving more thought to other artists/practitioners whose work resonated with me, sometimes in terms of their process, and sometimes in terms of their aesthetics. In a larger sense, this also helped inform my own practice and sense of aesthetics, defining for me what I wanted t take away from these works and what I purposefully left behind. For example, I looked at Escher’s artistic sensibilities to understand how he balances the bizarre with the ordinary, or how Bosch creates a sense of horror in scenes that are otherwise seemingly mundane. I also began to understand that my work needn’t have symbolism that the audience needs to “get.” I, as an artist, can only evoke something in them, not give them a class on symbolism. What gets evoked is not only completely subjective, but sometimes lends more symbolism than I might have intended. For example, a mural such as mine, that uses food as a metaphor to talk about the grind of daily life, may evoke memories of better days for someone, which could then make the piece also a stand-in for nostalgia. In conclusion, I have started to find my own voice as a practitioner of the creative. This has led to a very personal insight that art is being comfortable when you are lost, and design is being comfortable when you’ve found something.