Art & culture magazine # 0

ART & CULTURE Color this

Auroville

EDITORIAL We invite you, with these pages, to participate in a dialogue about Art and Culture in Auroville. The inspiration for this came from the ISP discussions on art & culture, where one of the strategies was to create space for artists and artistic discussion: (http://www.auroville.org.in/group/isp-culture).

"The critic can help to open the mind to the kinds of beauty he himself sees and not only to discover but to appreciate at their full value certain elements that make them beautiful or give them what is most characteristic or unique in their peculiar beauty." Sri Aurobindo We hope to promote a critical view of Auroville art and to make relative comparisons with what is happening elsewhere by reviewing and introducing interesting non-Aurovilian artists as well.

"It is not necessary that every man should be an artist. It is necessary that every man should have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct and sensitive." Sri Aurobindo Join us to comment on presentations in Auroville by artists, performers, filmmakers and writers. We encourage comparisons, strong opinions, and new outlooks on art/artists that interest you.

Nº0 - October 2010

This will promote a dialogue between the artists, the exhibition/publishing/ performance/screening halls and their audiences.

Do you have an exhibition coming up? Are you organizing a performance? Have you just published a book? Are you presenting your artistic oeuvre outside of Auroville? Wherever it is happening, let us know so we can organize a preview or a review. Have you absolutely disliked a show but have never said why? Has there been something that inspired you? Write about it to us.

"There is a considerable amount of difference between the vision of the ordinary people and the vision of the artists. Their way of seeing things is much more complete and conscious than that of ordinary people." The Mother What is the vision of the artists of Auroville? Are they sharing it with the community? Can we enter into their vision? Are they developing this 'vision' while being completely isolated in the cocoon of Auroville? How and what are the connections between the artists of Auroville and Auroville itself; between our artists and non-Aurovilian artists? Can there be an Auroville Art Movement that energizes our growing city?

Young artists are welcome to introduce their work on these pages. We look forward to your inputs.

Once a month we will publish articles and contributions according to space (max. 500 words). These should be sent to: info@aurovilleArts.com by the 15th of every month.

Unfortunately we are financially constrained to black & white, but we live in hope! (PT account 251282)

world of artists THE THIRD PARADISE

www.pistoletto.it/eng/testi/the_third_paradise.pdf

Kim & Muna

"What is the Third paradise? It is the fusion between the first and the second paradise. The first is the paradise in which terrestrial life is completely regulated by nature’s intelligence. The second is an Artificial Paradise; that which is developed by human intellect via a very slow process, which in the last few centuries has reached increasingly invasive dimensions. This paradise is made up of artificial needs, artificial commodities, artificial pleasures, and of every other form of artificiality. A world that is completely and utterly artificial has been created, which continues to grow, consuming and deteriorating the natural planet. The danger of a tragic collision between these two spheres is by now very obvious.

Alongside the universal need for the survival of the human species, the global project of the Third paradise is conceived, which consists in leading everything that is artificial; that is science and technology together with art; to give back life to Earth. This can only happen through an evolutionary step, in which human intelligence finds a way to develop a responsible creativity to co-inhabit with nature’s intelligence. The Third paradise is the new goal that leads everyone to take on personal responsibility in this revolutionary passage.

Biblical references are not intended in a religious sense, but are used to give meaning and strength to the concept of responsible social transformation, and to motivate a great ideal, which in a single step unites the arts, the sciences, the economy, spirituality and politics”.

Michelangelo Pistoletto 2003

Economy is culture or, in other words, has been shaped by the values and beliefs that guide our behavior, including the production, exchange and distribution of goods and services. There isn't an economy independent of what we do, think and feel. That's why the rules of economy could change: when a culture of cooperation replaces competition, when we assert “il tempo della vita” and not ”living to consume” and when we point to Nature and the detoxification of everything that is poisonous.

PAINTING EXHIBITIONS IN AUROVILLE The two ongoing exhibitions in Auroville are all about the 'inner world' of their creators. Gallery Square Circle at Bharat Nivas hosts “Painting Exhibition” by a duo, oddly called “Shadow Brothers”. It will be on from 4 -19 September, 2010. The other exhibition, by Hélène Gagnon, "Mandalas - Inner moments", is on in Pitanga from August 30th till September 11th.

Hélène Gagnon is from Montreal. Her small format paintings persuade us to view them at close range. In the words of this artist they are “a reflection of the inner eye rather than of the physical sense…” To say that this painter is motivated by her meditations which are a source of her art is quite right. Yet more correctly, the

Shadow Bros.

Time is precious.

We should not waste time We should use the time.

Do something with the time, guys!

Pradeepa

Lisa & Lakshmi

THE TIME

act of painting itself is meditation & consecration of the artist. Her paintings are observations of inner movements perceived as a practice 'of bringing light into darkness'. Hélène believes that the interactive movements of the five elements vary infinitely to organise the manifest world of form. They constitute the base for developing her visual repertoire. She plays with various elements — forms, moods of light, strength of colour - "as the alchemist transforms fires to bring out the unknown that dwells inside him".

Her language is austere: mostly basic forms in achromatic scheme, often circles in unflattering white and black juxtaposed to form mandalas. In this display the rarer figurative works are in colour, but it is not a footloose palette. It is a select range of warm salmon pinks grading into golden orange hues, light blues and other greys. Brown, too, is sparingly used, as in the paintings titled The cross and Aspiration. The colours bear on the Aurobindonian symbolism to a discernible extent but do not appear commonplace like an over-repeated cliché. Ms Gagnon holds her experience within her inner awareness and sketches rapidly the first visual, later to deliberate upon it in communicable form. “They are not visions”, she quickly adds, but an “inner research” .

While Ms Gagnon researches her inner world for light, the Shadow Brothers look for their pictorial universe in the dark of their subconscious. Their universe is actually chaotic. Some of the bigger canvases may at times have simply an abrupt phrase in English or an unstructured, infantile doodle. Other times the canvas may be over-painted, literally painted over, suggesting little more than an agitated impulse. Sometimes there are figures drawn with the practiced ease of an art student. To one of the artists, they need not make any sense except while he is in the process of painting them. “It is for the viewer to discern a 'meaning' out of my paintings”, says one shadow brother.

The poster announcing this show reads, “To whomsoever it may concern, All those who happen to walk a few minutes with our shadow, will find themselves flying with us into the canvas”.

If one does venture, one may most likely find oneself not quite “flying” but rather floating, with no sense of ground to bring home the point which those painting may want to make. Putting it like that may seem harsh, but that is more or less what the two artists from Puducherry, seem to intend.

Can not utter hopelessness, if it must be expressed at all, be expressed differently? One wonders uneasily.

Morning, I awake Sun rays are kissing my face It is spring again Lisa G.

JAZZ AV JAZ

FATHER & SON

Z AV JAZZ AV JAZZ AV JAZZ AV JAZZ AV JAZZ AV JAZZ AV JAZZ

Aurovilians Pascal Sieger (saxophone) and Simon Sieger (piano) performed improvised jazz on the 18th of September at Pitanga.

We all know Pascal as the saxophonist living in Sharnga. But it's been some time since Simon was in Auroville. Simon is a student of musicology at the University of Aix-en-Provence and was recognized as the best student for 2010; he is also a student of the Jazz Conservatory of Marseille. A product of Transition School and the Lycée Français, Simon best remembers the opportunity Auroville gave him to form his own year of schooling in between, where, with the selfless help of Paul, Jocelyn (Ravena), Boris and others, he followed his own syllabus of study. Time, he feels, is the advantage that Auroville gave him over his present colleagues: Time to practice his music, time to follow his interests, time……

And freedom: Freedom from peer pressure to fit into any “tribal” segmentations and rules, freedom from social obligations and narrow constraints. The time and freedom his teachers here had to interact with him for hours: Carel (Samasti), who introduced him to classical techniques, exercises and composers, and Elicha, the Hungarian teacher from the Conservatory in Vienna, both of whose training he found invaluable. And most of all, the time and freedom his father, Pascal, had, to spend with him, teaching, guiding his practice and giving him invaluable inputs.

Half their performance was improvisations on classical jazz pieces like “Melanie” by Freddie Redd and “After you've gone”;

world architecture TATE MODERN: A SYMBOL OF BRITAIN AS IT WOULD LIKE TO BE The purpose of a building like the Tate is to evoke valuable states of mind which we theoretically approve of but forget in the run of daily life; such virtues as perspective, calm, reflection, kindness and courage. One comes away from it with a sense that one had been returned, if only temporarily, to qualities central to our humanity.

We are still at heart a Protestant country, one that is a little timid about spending a lot of money on buildings, as the Catholics like to do. We allow ourselves to build museums to store pictures, but perhaps don't quite face up to a deeper longing, which is to put up buildings for the sake of it, for the sheer thrill of what architecture can do to our souls when it is working properly. It is a guilty secret that the art at Tate Modern is entirely secondary. Really the place is a temple to itself, a celebration of architecture rather than, as advertised, art.

In the secular parts of the world, it is common, even among unbelievers (perhaps especially among them) to lament the passing of the great days of religious construction. It is common to hear those who have no interest in the doctrines of religion admit to a nostalgia for ecclesiastical architecture: for the texture of stone walls in hillside chapels, for the profiles of spires glimpsed across darkening fields and for the sheer ambition involved in putting up cathedrals. But these moments

pieces that were 50-80 years old. There were many pieces completely improvised between the two of them.

They explain: “Improvisers use a cycle of chord progression over several measures to make a solo/chorus. When improvising on a 'standard', the musician plays on top of a general harmonic canvas.

The game of the improvisation is to ignore the canvas and invent a new one out of this — on the spot! Usually the soloist will give an idea. The accompanist understands whether the soloist is trying to totally destroy the canvas or just play with it a bit.”

What about the pieces that were completely improvised between them? Have they set a loose structure within which to work?

“No”, they respond simply, they like to be surprised by themselves. They try to constantly surprise each other, though they have rehearsed together 1000 times. They explain that an improviser listens to what is being proposed and tries to respond in the way that their ideal listener wants to hear.

And how do they break from their own patterns to create this surprise for themselves and others? Simon says he spends time listening to as many different kinds of music and sounds as he can.

Pascal explains that the improviser tries to be fresh with their instrument every time they approach it. They play with the instrument like a child does.

Listening to an improvisation needs an open spirit, says Simon, paraphrasing John Cage. It is like sitting in a forest listening to the sounds around you. Nature's music: No harmony, no rhythm, no composer -- we hear improvisation around us all the time. The judge of an improvisation is the listener, they explain. Only the audience can really say whether the improvisation has worked.

So we look forward to hearing from audience members: How was their improvisation? Was their communication good? Was one of them too noisy? Was either of them becoming fixated on their own point of view/statement? Or were they able to make an interesting conversation between them?

Pascal & Simon influences (at the Music Library): Fats Waller Indispensable RCA Jazz; Duke Ellington The Quintessence; Erroll Garner Soliloquy; Charlie Parker In A Soulful Mood; Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane At Carnegie Hall; Charlie Mingus Blues and Roots; Roland Kirk Rip Rig and Panic; John Coltrane A Love Supreme; Archie Shepp Mama Too Tight; Eric Dolphy Out for Lunch; Albert Ayler Live In Greenwich Village; Ornette Coleman This is Our Music; Cecil Taylor Unit Structures; Sun Ra Space is the Place; Thomas Chapin Third Force.

of nostalgia tend always to be cut short with the solemn deduction that an end to faith must inevitably mean an end to the possibility of sacred construction.

Behind this assumption lies the idea that where there are no more gods or deities, there can be nothing more to worship and hence nothing more to commemorate or celebrate through the medium of architecture.

Yet on examination, it plainly does not logically follow that an end to our belief in sacred beings must mean an end to our desire to provide a home on the Earth for concepts that we revere. It would mean uncharitably restricting our interests and possibilities to insist that we could only ever build temples to pay tribute to ideas associated with the triumvirate of Moses, Jesus and Buddha.

Tate Modern shows the way. In the absence of gods, we are still left with values we want to celebrate and venerate through buildings. There remains a role for marking off a piece of the ground and designating it as being, in the loosest sense, a holy site, valuable rather than supernaturally blessed. This is what Tate Modern has, quietly and almost as if by accident, become: a temple to the best of our contemporary selves.

By Alain de Botton Published: 28 Apr 2010 The Daily Telegraph

RECIPE • RECIPE • RECIPE • RECIPE • RECIPE

CHANNA PATÉ Ingredients: 500 gms Chickpeas 4 Cloves of garlic 200 gms Ricotta cheese 2 tbls Lemon juice Salt to taste Pepper to taste Parsley to taste Method: Cook chickpeas till soft (soak overnight and pressure cook for 1 Hr) Add all the rest of the ingredients and blend together till it's a smooth paste.

Delicious on bread or as a vegetable dip.

coming soon THE DIVINELY MAD PARVATHY BAUL Auroville will have a special performance in the middle of the first week of October by Parvathy Baul. Parvathy is one of the few female Baul singers in one of the oldest styles of the Baul tradition.

The “divinely mad” Bauls form the non-conformist bhakti tradition of Bengal (now West Bengal and Bangladesh). Many of them have very strong characters and the stories and legends that surround their sect generally illustrate the “madness” that they are associated with. They share the journey of the fakirs: a journey from “what you know to the one who knows”. Accompanying their singing with the instruments of their choice, each of them attempts to create a new strategy to pass through the social construct that surrounds them.

The Baul tradition has been variously inspired by the Siddha, Tantra, Buddha, Sufi and Vaishnav Bhakti movements. It requires one to be completely within the guru-sishya parampara tradition.

Parvathy comes from a very old lineage: Shri Sanatan Das Baul (Bankura district, who followed the style of legendary Baul singer-practitioner Shri Nitai Khapa), and Shri Shanko Goshai (from the Gurukul of the acclaimed singer-practitioner Shri Vrindavan Goshai and Shri Nityananda Goshai of Mushidabad) who left his body at the age of 100 in March 2006.

It is not easy to be or become a Baul and the guru checks carefully whether you are worthy of learning, whether you have totally surrendered your ego and whether you will carry the tradition with love and true inner practice. In the beginning of the training, this may mean that the student only eats what they are given by the villagers and that they do all the household work that the master's wife requires ….this is not the kind of music that is easy to learn!

In fact, it is not about music, but about a way of life and utter devotion (to the point of madness) to the Divine. The Bauls have a beautiful concept of 'madhukari', the butterfly that flits from flower to flower gathering honey. At a certain time, the guru indicates that the student must leave to learn from others: to collect honey.

And Parvathy takes this very seriously. The verses she sings serve as a key and reveal their higher meaning to the initiated as one enters a deep state of meditation. The language is unconventional: an esoteric language (Sandhya Basha) which hides its deeper spiritual/mystical significance. The traditional songs she sings use a poetic form which lies somewhere between philosophy,

poetry, music and dance. She accompanies herself with the ektara (a single string instrument made of bamboo, leather and wood, or bottle gourd), the duggi (a small round percussion instrument, usually tied to the hip of the singer-performer, made of clay and leather) and nupur (anklets made of specially processed metal).

This is an experience not to be missed. And for the lucky ones who have places in her workshop (organized by Estelle), we would welcome your articles about it.

Like many in Auroville, we work with love, talent, determination and little else. To support us, please contribute to PT account 251282.

Articles/illustrations/editing/design/money have been contributed by: Charu, Future School, Kim & Muna, Krishna, Lisa & Lakshmi, Lisa G, Marco, Mauna, Miniature, Olivier, Pierre, Pradeepa, Ramesh, Renu