S H R E YA B H AT I A
THE RUNNING TITLE
CONTENTS Artist’s Reflection Note
3
Welcome To Peenya
4
Systematicism
7
Through Time and Space
8
Moving for Motion
10
The Running Title
12
Acknowledgements
14
ARTIST’S REFLECTION NOTE The Art in Transit project has opened me up to a completely new understanding of public art and the responsibility of an artist during and after engaging with communities. My background has remained in film, and my initial reason to take this course was to gain an understanding of space and set design in order to take realise the aspects of space in planning my diploma film. The class explorations began with recognizing ‘Place’ from ‘Space’ and learning drawing as a tool for note making by visiting metro stations and mapping the areas surrounding it. Creating individual and group artefacts after internalizing the experience of transit through the purple line helped me articulate my lens for our subsequent intervention.
My inquiries always circled around adding color and the motion across the space to therapeutically calm the traveller. I was deeply inspired by the practice of Eurythmy( a therapeutic form of movement therapy where performers induce positivitivity and healing through not only the dance but by the colors, lights and the music). The experiments i created were all for the different purposes of attempting to re-experience a performance through space and time.My final intervention turned out to be a film itself since I felt it was the best medium to create the delight of leading someone through the paradox of transit by representing my own mental journey while traversing it. Film also adds a dimension of time and realism to an experience.
WELCOME TO PEENYA Peenya is one of Asia’s largest industrial areas. It inhabits over 500 industries and manufactures several raw materials. My first visit to Peenya gave me the sense of entering a Metropolis of sorts. The great divide between the industrial workers and the inhabitants of the residential area was apparent.I thought of the endless cycle of time and how everything is regularised and confined by time and space. This excercise was also possibly influenced by a conversation with the people of the ‘Kabir’Project in Srishti, mentioning the impermanence of everything and the metaphor of death constantly viewed as reinforcing life in an endless loop.
One of the most interesting class exercises we were given was to find metaphors for the same space in groups and create an artefact. In a group of 8, we created a product emphasising the monotonous nature of a metro ride. We created a board game based on the principles of monopoly and tried to represent the act of transit as a game more than just a ludid act of following. This assignment sparked the enquiry of exploring time and space as factors while exploring a place. As time can be stretched depending on how it is perceived.
After gaining an artistic stand on how I absorbed the space, Our class decided to map Peenya in a way google maps cannot allow you to traverse the space. Our final map was an interactive web application that would allow people to see a location map of Peenya allowing them to recognise the landmarks through adding the faces that inhabit the space in the map. So one could go past Peenya by recognising the face of a security guard or a stray dog rather than through the buildings that inhabit the space. I recognised the importance of how a place is perceived through the community that inhabits it. Group - Bijin Davis and Shreya Bhatia
SYSTEMATICISM After widening my understanding of a place through the places and people around, One of the thoughts that kept nagging me was how time and space are so stretched through Peenya. You see history and politics unfolding through every architectural and sociological aspect of the place with the industry and inhabitance divided across the space. For my subsequent indivisual metaphor for Peenya, I created a time telling navigational device, which allowed a person to experience their day by turning the time which has been replaced by space. and only the spokes of time ticking are constant while everything can be changed.The device shows you what to do rather than the time of day.
THROUGH SPACE AND TIME For our first work-in-progress exhibition, I was extremely confused about how to contextualise how I visualised my new realisation of Peenya. I decided the best way to represent a space through time is through history. I created ten 15ft long panels, representing the progression of Peenya since the 1970’s when it became an industrial belt before which it used to be only ragi fields . (refer to image on the next spread) This experiment was originally supposed to be presented under the 10 pillar facades under the metro station on the road so when someone were to pass by in a car, at a given speed they would view this progression as a moving image. This exhibition taught me that I could not apply my experiment due to my own indecisiveness over how my visualisation should be experienced. This taught me a lesson about how to plan my visualisation wholistically rather than through the concept alone.
MOVING FOR MOTION
After the exhibition, my concept developed further into not only trying to create the delight of a moving image but also trying to induce delight in the act of motion itself. I created a series of gifs and moved on using live action footage and then cutting it into indivisual frames in order to break down the motion across space and time. The project became more about the experience of moving rather than the delight of finding a moving image while already in motion. The various experiments i undertook to realise my project were all for specific tests, either in its movement, color, texture or light was designed to be tested physically accross time and space.
What I finally realised was that my project was not being realised through breaking down the motion for people but by creating a space for the traveller to experience the act of moving in a different light altogether. I eventually gave up the idea of trying to create a performance through space as i could find the right context for creating my final intervention. After reviewing all my work, I decided to go back to my initial proposal which was creating an experience through time and space, which i realised i can also do by creating a motion picture to sum up my experiments and interests through out the this process. (Please refer to physical accordian folds to view each experiment fully)
THE RUNNING TITLE I finally arrived at my final form after trying out my experiments through space and time across places. I realised the paradox between space and time can be created through a visual and auditory sense for my purposes. the film The Running Title, came out of my thoughts and reflections through out the course, but the concept of the film is inspired from the impermanence of the present, a conversation struck by ‘Kabir project’ and also the idea between this parellel journey running in ones head while they are in transit. The visual creates a montage of images that can either induce a memory or trigger a thought in the viewer and the monotone of the sound keeps one aware of the present monotony of the travel.
The film explores the notion of the mental journey through color and light with the stream of consiousness soundscape pacing by to represent the moment passed will never return and then the idea is to play with the kind of emotion or memory the film evokes in the viewer that creates the ‘delight’ in transit.
Eventhough the film deviated from the idea of creating an analog animation, the more I dwelled in it I realised i do not understand the physics behind this phenomena fully to execute it with precision and something that is visually exciting. However, I do feel like I accomplished to create a film that pushes the idea of a film beyond information or entertainment, but as art for a change. The experimental nature of this project may not make it accessible or interesting to all the audiences, I did not want to simplify my own understanding of the project and the art that came out of it. An experimental film as a piece of art, needs to be experienced more than just viewed, and needs to be interpretted than guide the viewer. Now that the project has concluded, I feel like I have managed to generate alot more different ideas for my future art practises and have evolved in my understanding of art.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Art in Transit Team (all 40 of us) Arzu Mistry, Amitabh Kumar, Samir Parker Agnishikha Chaudhary. Auritra Ghosh BMRCL Namita Bhatia Sakshi Bhatia Sanskriti Mohta. Artist References- Zimoun, Doctor Who, Waking Life, Tusalava, Bill Murray, the practise of Eurythmy, This Book is dedicated to the memory of my late father Mr.Amit Bhati
art in transit documentation book