In India Between The Light And The Dark (english version) from Tomas Krupa on Vimeo.

This film was made by three Slovakian students that I met during my first hour in India. I arrived in Mumbai at around 1am and after booking into one of the cheap guesthouses I went for a walk. It was dark, Mumbai was asleep, someone let me into a dark room that was supposed to be an Internet café. For a moment I became scared of the darkness and the stranger who was leading me through the space. Then another door opened and when I walked in it turned out to be a bright room with computers and a group of westerners. I felt relived to see them.

They were traveling through India, filming a documentary. The film was supposed to be some sort of record of their journey. It was their first time in India too.

Without an initial plan, I decided where to go each morning. I was meeting different people on my way everyday. So did the filmmakers. I often followed the same track as they did (the tourist track) encountering similar situations to the ones they encountered. However, at the time it felt as if it was my own trail, a very special one.

I have returned to India two times after that trip. Both times to work on an art project. How different India and Indian people became in my eyes. How complex, sometimes difficult to understand. The class divisions, the inequality of life and my own presence there all puzzled me. I still have many of the same questions.

What I find very interesting is that by trying to understand "there" I am inevitably decoding "here".

I also frequently wonder about the words "cultural differences". Is it that we sometimes use them to cover things up? Explaining things, without really explaining anything. Rather, getting rid of responsibility, or discomfort.

I've wondered off a little. I posted the film because it seems to picture an honest way, that first time in a land, which feels "exotic". While aiming to see as much as you can, decoding and attempting to understand you are equally falling into cliché that are constructed, often unconsciously, by your own prejudices.

Meeting Monimala and Jakub in London

Two weeks ago we spent a day with Monimala and Jakub, two Patachitra artists that are currently visiting the UK to promote their art. They are visiting the UK as part of a programme to promote Indian folk-art that is organised byBanglanatak.com.

We have been looking forward to this meeting, as we haven't been in touch with the Patachitra since we left India in April. We did feel apprehensive about communicating with Monimala and Jakub as we don’t speak Bengali and they speak very little English. Considering our translator was only able to stay for an hour we did surprisingly well! With a lot of pointing and drawing in the air...

We were of course limited in our ability to share our thoughts, and we were not able to ask all the questions we intended to. Sometimes we would say, "ok, ok...” yet feeling that something was left unclear or perhaps feeling we were being misunderstood.

That day we visited various contemporary art galleries in London. When we visited the Patua in India, they had presented their work and the works that had inspired them. Now we wanted to show a little bit of our life and what inspired our work. We visited art galleries that showed different approaches to making and presenting art in London and took them to places that show how we live and where we come from.

That evening we watched "Premise - ..." at Niels's house and after dinner Monimala sang Bengali songs. Unfortunately, we couldn't think of any songs to sing in return. Is our culture less expressive?

A day like this really makes me think about how momentary meetings like these are and how much we could all learn from them. We’re dressed in a different way, wer’e born and raised in a different culture, most of the things we’re used to are different, and yet, yesterday we kept saying: "I know what you mean", "I understand"... There was some sort of acceptance, kindness towards our differences. Those differences became reasons to talk, to compare our day-to-day realities, to exchange various points of view.

Transition giving talk at Studio 21 in Kolkata

Installation view at Akar Prakar

From the opening of "Transformation" at Akar Prakar in Kolkata in April 2010

Series of questions for Patua

• How do the Patua see the work? What, in their conception of the project, is the work ? Where do they allocate 'weight'
• What do the Patua think about the project
• What was the most important part of the project for them (another way of asking where they allocate 'weight')
• How would they feel about us showing the work again?
• How would they feel about us reformulating the work?
• Who does the work belong to? Does the work belong to anyone?
  
• Is there anything they would like to change or would have done differently
• Would they like to continue with it?
• Do they think it is finished?
• Were our actions clear to them? Did they feel happy about the way we worked?
• Did they feel we understood them? And how they work?

Designing an apparatus for watching the films

We are currently discussing designing an autonomous structure to watch the films in/ from for future installations.  Previous installations presented the entire process of the project as installation, spanning several rooms, with significant emphasis on the film as the final piece. By designing an apparatus for viewing the films we will , to some extent, be reformulating the work.

Before outlining a brief there are some questions and points that we've touched on in conversation, but haven't yet discussed in detail. 

• How would positioning the film within an architectural structure (that we design) affect the film?
• Will the structure serve the films? Or will the films be subservient to the structure?
• The structure will go some way to dictating the manner in which the film is viewed/ received. The viewer may be subservient to the structure.
• We are showing them how to read the project. Giving it form. Allocating 'weight'
• In generating ideas for the design how do we engage more with the content of the films? Should we avoid being too 'formal' and detached? 
• A lot of our input in the project has been structural. We have architect-ed: the workshop activities, the making of the film, the editing, the installation of the work in the gallery. Whilst the Patua have been the storytellers, the image-makers. They have projected their ideas, processed and interpreted, converted them into language, stories and images. We have been the framers, the punctuation, the material and the manner of presentation.
• who is the viewer?
• what do we want from them?
• What are we trying to communicate to them?
• which films will we show? 
• how will they relate to each other- in space?

To be continued..

understanding language

"it's easier translating the second time around... now that i know how the patuas talk.. it made no sense the first time around... i though they were loosing their minds !!!"

After we came to London we have noticed that the script we were working with in India didn't really match with what was happening in the film. When shooting particular scenes we often felt quite disorientated, as things didn't make sense. We would read the script, trying to match text with what was happening in front of the camera and couldn't understand what was it all about. After reading the second translation (a month ago) from the dialect, which Patua spoke, to English we have realized that our film was supposed to be some sort of comedy. When in India, we were convinced that it was rather serious story dwelling on religion and problems, which Patua dealt in their everyday life.

When Sumona sent us second translation we realized that all our attempts to make the film look "better", by the way we filmed, were going in the wrong direction. We misinterpreted Patua's intentions, and our actions in some way must have been misleading for them.

Here is the first translation:

Patachitra artists are coming to UK in November!

from Banglanatak.com - retrospectively

Erasing Boundaries by Manas Acharya

In the past few years banglanatak dot com has undertaken an initiative to broaden the horizon of curatorial art practice as an innovative social development method. We have tried to transfigure it into a new platform for exchange, assimilation and improvisation between the traditional folk artists of Bengal and the contemporary mainstream urban artists across the globe. The idea behind curating these activities, spanning from interdisciplinary

collaborative art project to public space art, is to explore the possibilities of collaboration by erasing the demarcations that segregates the various art practices across the world. In 2009 we started a uniquely innovative interdisciplinary art initiative titled, ‘POTential - An effort to explore’. ‘Potential II’ a similar workshop held in 2010 at the Natyashala II, EZCC Campus at Salt Lake, Kolkata was an extension of the former. An open studio was also organized at

Akar Prakar Art Gallery, Kolkata.

The 12-day workshop for Potential II commenced with an orientation programme spanning over 2 days during which, the guest-artists from London visited Naya village in West Midnapore. During this visit they shared their art as well as learnt about the history and nuances of Patachitra Art. A film documenting the workshop from the previous year was screened every evening for the Patachitra community. The guest artists also initiated small participatory events where the theme for this year’s workshop, ‘Transformation’, was introduced.

This was followed by an open studio in Kolkata where 20 artworks were developed collaboratively. This included Patachitra paintings, films, animation, a documentation of the community participatory game ’Chinese Whisper’, photographs, drawings, video installations and even scrawls and scribbles based on the theme ‘Transformation’. As a coordinator it was a unique experience for me to have witnessed this workshop.

The Earth Day 2010 Workshop was yet another interesting experience. The workshop was based on the theme ‘ART FOR EARTH’ and was held in a public space. ‘Transit’ the new-media artists from London, the experimental artists from ‘Khoj Kolkata’ and a number of young talented artists, along with Patuas and Baul-Fakirs evolved an installation performance voicing their concerns for environment on the 40th anniversary of the Earth Day.

Screening today at The Pigeon Wing

Following the success of The Pigeon Wing’s MINIPLEX at Depford X,

we invite you to one final screening of our full programme of films,

in the ‘not so mini’ comfort of The Pigeon Wing.

3-8pm Saturday 16th October at The Pigeon Wing.

For more information email info@thepigeonwing.co.uk

Films:

The Fictional Pixel – Steve Claydon
Premise – Transition Collective
A Necessary Music – Beartice Gibson
Point, Line, Plane – Simon Payne
A Week in the News: 7 Places We Think We Know, 7 News Stories We Think We Understand – Grace Ndiritu
Heliocentric – Semiconductor
The Curious – Sally O’really
An Island – Luca Bolognesi
The Voyage of Nonsuch – Ruth Beale & Karen Mirza
Men With No Names – Justin Berry
Ballet De Suez – Ian Parkin
Pay Attention – Giles Ripley
Mr Fox – Max Swinton
Mr Pike – Max Swinton
The Turning – Matthew MacKisack
The Incoherence of the Incoherence – Matthew MacKisack

click here for full screening times

Kindly Supported By:

MINIPLEX at Deptford Festival

Premise – There Is No End To The Story About The Artists From America And India (x3) will be screened at DepfordX from 25th of September to the 3rd of October

On formation

When we started our co-operation in Kolkata we brainstormed about the possibilities and meaning of the word ‘Transformation’. During one of these sessions someone (I’m afraid I can’t remember who) suggested a story. The story tells us about a man who looses his cat to a snake. In short, a snake had wanted to attack the man was it not for his cat, who succeeded in preventing this. However, the snake had bitten the cat during the struggle and so the cat ultimately sacrificed his life to save his master.

I still remember being at a complete loss as to how this story was related to the other proposals/ideas people had put forward. Most of the other suggestions did in some way relate to ‘Transformation’ as we had suggested.

Looking back, I probably dismissed the idea too easily, not in the least because during the preparations I had developed my own ideas and expectations. One of the main concerns for Transit\ion was (and probably still is) how we could develop creative exchanges without taking control of the entire project. Perhaps, stories about sacrifice/power relations did not really fit this aim?

Re-reading my notebook also reinforces my own feeling that we were looking for ways to cooperate as a strategy for creativity. We were all careful to make sure everyone participated, clearly visible in the fact that everyone appears in the film we made in Kolkata. But, it was not only Transit\ion’s desire. The original script written by the Patua is really a combination of many of the suggestions put forward during our initial brainstorming sessions. Was this an intentional amalgamation so everyone was being represented? We were equally non-confrontational when we were invited to respond to the script. Our suggested interventions where all very formal and we hardly engaged in the writing or content of the script.

So, to come back to the story about the cat, it would have been an interesting story to engage with. It would have highlighted, in a more direct way what we were aiming to achieve (ie… to get away from). Sadly, I didn’t see it at the time.

Translated from - 'A Reporters Self Portrait' by R. Kapuściński

“Stereotype – comes not from the knowledge, but from the emotions – therefore is dangerous”

Update

We are at the stage of de-constructing of what we did in India. Looking through the video material filmed during the project, we are revisiting those three weeks; we are re-thinking everything that happened. Leaving Kolkata, we knew it was only a stage of the project that we left behind, that another one will start once we look at things from our homes in London. When we were in India we were impressionable, perceiving things in a sensual way, everything was new and there was so much happening around. The way we thought and behaved was influenced by what was happening around us, was altered by it. However, it was also important to allow ourselves to take in as much as we could, to absorb the atmosphere of the place, to meet as many people as we could, as all those conversations, trips to local markets or wonderings around were crucial in understanding the context of the palce we were working in and understanding where Patua come from. Operating in this unfamiliar environment also made us aware of certain mechanics in our thinking and behavioural processes. We were, therefore, better equipped to see things without certain set of filters (cultural, stereotypical)

New Ways of Communicating

We had to adjust to different ways of communicating during our collaboration with Patua artists. They spoke Bengali, while we spoke English, Polish, Lithuanian and Dutch. None of the languages known to us became useful in a direct contact with our colleagues. I started writing single Bengali words and short sentences down, to engage in the simplest conversations. They would learn the same words and sentences in English. However, what we really tried to understand was the language of symbols and signs - the information that came not only from what was said but also from the way it was said, the way people behaved, the way they lived…

Often in the evenings, we would sit down and de-construct what happened during the day, analyzing our mutual behaviours, trying to read from them. Then we built from it, re-creating the reality, learning.

In the film, this became mostly visible in three scenes, the dinner scene, the first dancing scene and the scene when I speak in Bengali.

To have a dinner with European food came up as an idea during one of our brain storming crits, where Transit\ion introduced the meaning of the term transformation, which was translated to Bengali as rupantor. To make sure that we all had a similar understanding of the word we had a brain storming session, where examples of transformation and possible ways of working with the term would be given. Suman suggested they experience some of our roles and environments, as Transit\ion had visited their villages and lived with them in theirs.

We responded to this with a dinner invitation, where the food cooked and served in a European manner was served and we acted as waiting staff, in the villages the Patua had always insisted on serving us.

The dancing scene was directed by the Patachitra. Tilly and I were invited/requested to participate. By following certain movements and realizing the symbolic significance embedded in them, with some help from Sumona (our translator and interpreter) we became aware of the meaning of the entire song. This awareness opened another door for us, becoming one more key to understanding Patuas and where their creative process begins.

The scene of me talking with Bablu was shot on one of the first days of making the film. I was asked to act in Bengali, but had no knowledge of what the text was about. I read from the tone of his voice and his body language and attempted to respond with the same type of emotion. I also wanted to stand up to him as a woman, I wanted my voice to be loud and my laugh to be powerful. What I was saying was secondary to the way I was saying it, letting my own experiences and believes influence the act.

Film Stills

The screenplay is set in the villages in the district of Midnapur where the Patua live, but shot in the suburbs of East Kolkata, in locations, which resemble village life. In twelve short scenes multiple stories are woven together: the Patua preparing for the film shooting, scenes from their everyday life, and passionate scenes highlighting ecological issues like deforestation and river contamination that affect the Patua on a daily basis.

Shooting On Location