The Rhizome & Sandeep Sangaru
A Rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.
If a Rhizome is separated, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. Commonly known Rhizomes include Ginger, Bamboo, The Venus flytrap, Turmeric and the Lotus.
It is an amazing serendipity that the prolific work of Sandeep Sangaru, should involve working with a Rhizome.
The origin of these minimal bamboo forms goes back to 2002, when Sangaru first visited Agartala’s artisan workshops. The North-East has historically used the material extensively, for everything from large structural constructions like bridges and houses to furniture, toys, tools and beautifully crafted musical instruments.
“What I realised was that their use of bamboo for their everyday lives was so evolved, yet the craft bazaars always saw the same archaic bamboo souvenirs,"
“We offered Sangaru’s work last year at Shanghai, and this year decided to bring it to the West (London). Firstly, the materials he is working with were of great interest in the curation of the sale: bamboo and lacquer. And secondly, it integrates traditional skills but adapted to our modern world.”
Sangaru’s pieces fit into a house in Paris or a loft in New York or an apartment in China. It’s global and at the same time rich in the local history of India,” Geraldine Lenain ( international director at Christie’s )
To build a system that spans from the homes of Tripura to the living rooms of London, is symptomatic of Rhizomatic growth. In his large horizontal web, Sangaru’s work connects many nodes, allowing each point in the system to mutually inform the other.
Towards a Rhizomatic Crafts practice
“When working with craftsmen I depend on them for their traditional knowledge of working with a material efficiently and effectively. This process of making a number of prototypes before we finalise a particular one that is ready to be produced, is a constant interaction and experimentation. This process of pushing ourselves to create a good product through these iterations can only take shape if there is a healthy collaboration.�
“Truss-Me� uses Bamboo’s inherent property of high tensile strength and the various mechanical properties it has to create a structure system that is light, strong and formally pleasing.
Welcome to The Rhizome
"As a model for culture, the Rhizome resists the organisational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterised by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.�
“Rather than narrativise history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, inter-being, intermezzo.' The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organisation, instead favouring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.�
"In this model, culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space.� Deleuze and Guattari, 1980
The Rhizome & Sandeep Sangaru
The Rhizome + Connection
Can you define the beginning or the end of a Bamboo Grove?
At it’s surface, the grove offers no clues to it’s vast interconnected subterranean network. Every so often, a sharp optimistic stab of green signifies the rich web of connections that exist below the surface. Can you define the beginning or the end of a Crafts practice? Every expression speaks of an interdependent, interwoven cultural system and Sandeep Sangaru’s work offers us a glimpse into the potential of this hidden world.
Sandeep Sangaru’s prolific work stands in a networked reality with various contributors, collaborators and communities. The production of the artefact is a single node in a vast networked universe of points. His work conceals a great strength of visualisation and connective ability, subsequently manifested through his endless iterations.
The Nature of the Rhizomatic practice defies sharp flowchart-like eventualities, since the idea of the “sequence of events” itself is under scrutiny. When no clear temporal sequence exists, the Rhizome grows laterally and in synchronicity. Outcomes are now defined by simultaneous events and happenings, that bear little or no resemblance to a linear “manifesto” driven process. The process becomes a playful exploration of adjacencies, and all experiments are valid.
“I have been childlike, exploring the world around me and making things,” Sandeep says, “studying and school were not my thing and I have never been exam or result oriented. I take life as it comes and everything grows organically for me.” http://designdrift.in/2016/10/03/where-good-design-blossoms/
One of NID’s widely loved senior faculty members, Mr. M.P. Ranjan asked him to teach craftsmen dealing with bamboo in Tripura. Ranjan himself was widely celebrated as one of world’s foremost experts on Bamboo and it’s related systems.
“I initially hesitated because for me the idea of bamboo took my imagination only as far as ladders and scaffoldings.” But he took the plunge and once again, a new world, a new space opened up. In Tripura, everything revolved around bamboo: building materials for home to food in their kitchen. http://designdrift.in/2016/10/03/where-good-design-blossoms/
“What could I contribute here,” Sandeep was left wondering, “where everything has been done?”
The only contribution, he soon realized, was to learn. http://designdrift.in/2016/10/03/where-good-design-blossoms/
The Rhizome + Heterogenity
Contingent Root : Latin “Con” “Tango” Con - Together Tango - Touch To be Contingent, is then To Touch all sides, simultaneously, in promiscuous Heterogeneity.
Your first design was a very unusual chair: it brought bamboo furniture straight into the 21st century.
“The chair had only one leg and looked like a triangle. Not only did I want to showcase bamboo in a new way, I also wanted to invent a completely innovative production technique. I started to rethink how to split and coat bamboo. This one-legged stool was a sort of joke product, a prototype which garnered a lot of attention. Next, I designed a furniture collection which won the 2009 Red Dot Design Award. I called it ‘Truss-Me‘, since nobody really trusted bamboo as a material. http://ambiente-blog.com/sandeep-sangaru-2/
In Rhizomatic practice, adjacencies and heterogeneity are encouraged and collaborations are the only way forward. Every brush with a new skill, every trip to a new geography, every new conversation and friendship is the gaping wound of a new beginning. The Rhizome is the venue for the collisions of unconnected causalities.
How one collects knowledge situated in one’s geography conceals ethical positions. Knowledge collected at knife-point in the harbours of sea-faring empires comes tainted by commerce and transaction. Knowledge collected in an interconnected reality with crafts practice carries embedded within it the ethics of an inter-connected Life.
“Initially I didn’t understand bamboo any better than the casual observer. It was only in the state of Tripura in north-east India, where I was teaching technical drawing to craftspeople, that I started to see bamboo in a different light. In Tripura, bamboo is part of the lifestyle. Everyone uses it in some shape or form, be it for bridge building, houses, fish traps or to shelter from the rain. Even children can weave baskets from bamboo before they reach school age.
Everything I found there was both simple and functional. The industrial designer in me asked how far I could develop this multifaceted material.� http://ambiente-blog.com/sandeep-sangaru-2/
The Rhizome + Asignifying Rupture
Every rupture in Rhizomatic practice suggests a new connection, and a beginning of new possibilities. The way to navigate Rhizomatic practice then is to continually iterate, exploring as many adjacencies as available to the practitioner. The Open Rhizomatic system then allows for surprises, mutations and eventually evolution.
As a child, Sandeep Sangaru would often pull apart and put back together sundry items, toys and bicycles. "I wanted to build things. I'd try to make new things from parts," says Sangaru. "I loved the idea of exploring and discovering.�
Perhaps why the furniture designer explains design as evolution. "Design is nothing but planning for the future. You plan a solution, and since you don't know what's coming up next, you might have to find another one. Even so, design is not the final solution or even the solution, but making something better, lighter and accessible."
"Craft is bracketed as ethnic and decorative. Craftsmen and artisans are looked upon as skilled people, not necessarily as creative ones," he points out. Craftsmen are not challenged to create something new. And we won't get new ideas if we don't ask them to create something new."
In the Politics of defining Design and Craft, linguistic advantages and disciplinary jargon protect and insulate both domains. The Designer invariably takes up the vacant spot at the top of the pyramid, and his position there is rarely questioned, in the flowchart-based, top-down static nature of the relationship. In Rhizomatic practices of the future, a robust learning connections in the web of relationships creates longevity, responsiveness, and a possibility of collective Renaissance.
Human historical narratives of the “beginning and end” start with promise, and end in apocalypse, with Shamans of Politics, Religion and Craft guarding each stage of the “cleanse” before meeting our logical end, death or success, as the case maybe. In the Rhizomatic future, no beginning and end is possible, each life and each experiment is intrinsically linked with every adjacency that surrounds it. Each rupture signifies the chance of a new growth.
The Rhizome + Cartography
One can enter a Rhizome at any point. Like a Map, Rhizomatic territory is always being negotiated, unfinished, and subject to vagaries of navigational choice.
In the process of establishing a terrain, Sandeep’s practice relies on chance connections and new offshoots. In true Rhizomatic style, his practice shoots off into exciting new directions, and aims to push an optimistic new shoot into new terrain.
In his recent forays into the lacquered wood crafts of Channapatna, and the Walnut carvings of Kashmir, we see the Rhizome propagating into wholly new domains and creating a rich web of inter-connected learnings.
The true strength of the active Rhizomatic practice lies in it’s inter-connectedness, where each node retains the memory of the last. While it’s chaotic nature of propagation seems to fight assimilation, the Rhizomatic practice holds within it the luxury of overview. By constantly following contours on the terrain, the Rhizome creates a web of connections, and may point the way to a true Renaissance.
TOOLS
ONE TOOL ONE MATERIAL
MATERIAL CULTURAL PROCESSES FRUGALITY AS A REFLECTION OF “WAY OF LIFE” PRODUCTS RATHER THAN TRADE IRRATIONALITY AND IRRATIONAL DEMANDS SYSTEMS MAPPING FOR PRODUCTION NETWORK
HOW DOES IT TIE INTO “SUSTAINABILITY” AS A WHOLE IS SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY ( LARGER OBJECTS LARGER PROFIT ) LINKED TO SUSTAINABLE PRACTICE ( LONGEVITY OF THE CRAFT )
SUSTAINABILITY
ENCOURAGING ARTISANS TO PUSH THEMSELVES
CONNECTING THE DOTS GLOBAL VALUE TRAVEL
WATER TABLE THE IDEA OF MAKING PROBLEM SOLVING
ENVIRONMENT ENGINEERING BACKGROUND
ETHICS IN MAKING CRITIQUE ON OFF-THE-SHELF ECONOMY
PROFESSOR SANGARU AND THE RHIZOME
IS BAMBOO LOCAL EVERYWHERE? HOW TO TIE IN SPECIFICS OF “LOCAL” SUCH THAT IT’S NOT MISUNDERSTOOD CIRCULAR ECONOMY WHAT ARE THE ENDURING VALUES OF “TRUSS ME”?
DIGNITY FURNITURE FOR LIVELIHOOD
ETHICS
HERITAGE
FUTURE HERITAGE
MORALITY
DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR PRACTICE AS A BATON HOLDER HOW CAN THEY BE SCALED UP TO OTHER APPLICATIONS?
LOCAL VALUE WIDE DEFINITION OF CRAFTS DESIGN INTENT EDUCATION
AFTER NID
ECOLOGY GENERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PROCESS
THE WEALTH OF TRADITION SKILL THE CHILD’S PERSPECTIVE JOURNEY FROM TRIPURA TO CHRISTIES
The Incomplete Rhizome of Sandeep Sangaru