STUDIO PROJECT MUMBAI PROJECT
_________________________________Capasia v assignment Gaurab k.c.
Introduction As team mates Marino and me, wanted to do something which engaged the public and us, I guess fit in a cultural setting. Although our project wasn’t any particular structure or design, it was more experiential and cultural. We were playing with people’s minds, and interpret and translate our experience in understanding people. Initially Marino and I thought of going down to the streets and doing hair cutting just like we saw hair cutters in the streets of Mumbai. The hair cutting idea was to observe and see how people would react and respond, this was purely experimental to see how the cultural mass would behave or respond. This idea could not go further because of its risks in terms of the act itself and our question of, would people actually come and get their hair cut, it was a kind of a professional question. This led to a shift in the idea, but in essence retained its engagement with the public, and took the form of a street musical performance. Our main idea was to experience the public response, their comments and feel their behavior towards us. Although we didn’t have much of a professional performance, the bold idea was to sit there on the street and perform putting down a glass in front of us and collect money. Marino and myself after we decided that we would go on the street and perform and beg for money, we started to synthesize the project. First we collected a guitar from Dinesh one of the final year students at KRVIA ( Kamla Raheja Institute of Architects, Mumbai ). Then we came back to our Hostel at Villa Parle and started working on composing and writing songs. We managed to compose and write three songs. The first one was a love song, then a song on the Capasia Blues and lastly a song on Dharavi.
The event. The event happened with a series of incidents, where people and other street people reacted, showed their emotions, welcomed us or ignored us. We went down through to Church gate area and performed around the S.P.Mukerjee Chowk, our first sitting was at the Madame Cama road near St.Annes School, our second sitting was at Nathal Parekh road, then we walked up to Gateway of India, and finally w e were for a longer time at Mahatma Gandhi Road near the Jahangir Art gallery. Act I Scene I At the first sitting near the school there were many school children hanging around us with surprise and amusement, mostly curious but never communicated or passed any comments at us. The most memorable comment to me was this person who put in twenty rupees as the first person to contribute in our charity cup, by saying that “you guys are not beggars, you are street musicians”. This particular comment makes me think about begging and musicians, also the eastern and western cultural ideas. With a begging cup in front of us it made us look like beggars in a country where begging is predominant in most urban centers and almost has an cultural overtone to it. It made us no different than most beggars who are also musicians especially in India. We come across most of these musicians in Railway stations and inside the bogeys of most trains. In a way there was a contradiction between who we were and what we were doing and the surrounding culture. We were trying to practice a culture in a particular cultural landscape and experience what begging is like for a few hours, it was l ike
putting ourselves in their shoes knowingly for a few hours. The most powerful feature was the surrounding or the landscape where we were performing this act. Just like trying to become a hair cutter for a few hours we intended to be beggars for a few hours. The only obvious fact was that we did not look like beggars, but it seemed like we drew a connection between begging and entertaining. The whole act drew connections between being an artist and pain. Although playing our music brought us momentary joy, there was pain along with the act, which fuelled our act and made it sincere. As people came and watched us the sincerity grew and made us focus more on the music and what we were doing. The process was inward, there was mainly three things involved, first the art and act we were performing, second the begging bowl and third the audience or people. It was us, what we were doing and bridging the connection between money and people. All along the heart was involved, with pleasure and pain.
Performing was fun but the hard part was putting down the metal glass and small carpet to as k for money everytime we put the money glass up it felt difficult and a sense of responsibility grew leading us to perform tightly. With many people passing comments and passer-byes walking probably making fun of us, I just believed in what I did, I just felt more firm in what I did, there was a sense of responsibility. This belief that grew inside me which led to further believing in what I did came through the sincerity in being able to stand up in society and facing the people. I realized that the more one can face people, the more widely can people ave a bigger heart and the more people enter into purity, the more purity the more embracing if one is pure only then can one embrace people . Thus, if one is less pure one cannot face people one cannot be open, hence less embracing, if one embraces more then there is firm belief in what one does and what one believes.
Act II Scene II It was in this second place where we were quickly asked to move out because many people had surro unded us and it started to get crowed disturbing the shops opposite to where we sat and performed. We started performing and soon there were many people surrounding us, here it was a comment in Hindi, where this person was
communicating with other people, by saying that “now they are here (as in geographically India), beggin g, have they started to beg now�. This comment was that of making fun and a racial one against white people and Westerners. This comment was a little hard for me to digest as it was a racial comment one that was speaking of the Indian superiority, where begging culturally (eastern) is regarded as an act of true poverty. It also makes it clear that, this person was unaware of the Western culture and music, as he seemed uninterested in but looked at the event. At this place since we were sitting and playing just in front of shops, and many people had surrounded the shops the shop owners requested us politely to play somewhere else. At this point we also got a feeling of what we were doing was something objectionable also, and thoughts of police chasing us also came to us. Act III Scene III Just after the second place, we then moved on to India Gate, where we thought there would be many people and it would be a better place to entertain. Unfortuna tely, to our disappointment this place was like a plaza open and diluted with people, although there were many people the scale of the place was too big for us to be noticed and to be cared for. The attraction of the India gate and its seriousness beat our small idea of performance. We were too small in front of this huge structure and its surrounding. We found a place to sit near the small open air theatre, and started to play. The place was too big that our sounds could not reach anyone. There were occasionally some people who looked at us and passed by. They thought we were playing for ourselves and were enjoying among ourselves with a guitar. They did not take us seriously. Here the tone was light and casual, there were many foreigners who jus t looked at us and passed by. To our disappointment, we could not make any connection with the people in this place. We were ignored in this place, because the scale did not match our performance and mentally we were not important because of a much more serious event standing in front of us. As a performer we had to leave unhappily, but in hope to find a better place to enjoy.
Act IV Scene IV It was at the last sitting near the Jahangir Art Gallery, that, we were recognized by these street artists who drew portraits of people on the street with paintings and drawings hung for sale, as musicians we looked like friends to them who connected with us. Here, as we were preparing to sit and play by ourselves, when a group of people from the street hangout area came and invited us to play with them. This is where our performance took full shape and took off in different directions.
We started off by performing our self composed songs, in the seriousness of it all, some people took pictures of us performing in all directions. We kept repeating the songs for a while when many p eople stood in front of us to get entertained. Here our artist friends helped us by communicating with the audience and asking them to contribute some money in our begging cup. This made the atmosphere easy and friendly not stiff but flexible and smooth. After a while we were offered tea by our friends. Slowly this friendliness slipped into exchange of ideas and performance together. There seemed to be an old art teacher who too was interested in performing with us and shared some of his songs with us. In this process there came many more other friends who wanted to share with us some Hindi songs, as I played the guitar for them they sang and we tried to entertain the people around us, turning the evening into a participatory and light hearted event.
Conclusion Overall the feeling was tremendous and the experience unforgettable. Our only draw -back was that we didn’t have enough materials to play. We were prepared for only three songs, but like in the last place where we played we ran short of materials to play. It seemed too short and too less, but while playing with our other artists friends we covered up. The hardest part initially was the money but at the end the music took over and people got into the music more than the begging part. We were pretty much as an artist, just like most of them, and therefore the cultural boundary was broken. We were accepted by another culture, some -what international, we had transformed from a local to a global. It is also evident through the compartmentalized study, the global system is connected.