Film Screening in Naya and Dashpur

 

At Pingla and Dashpur we organised screenings of a film we made, compiled from footage taken during last years project. The screenings were an opportunity for the people in the village to see what the participating artists made last year, and a reminder for the artists.

Plant Pigments

Very few of the Patua still routinely use traditional vegetable colours in their paintings, instead opting for ready made pigments. The plants they would have needed for the dyes can all be sourced locally, from the land around their homes and the surrounding countryside. 

             
              Yellow =       powdered saffron

               Blues =       aparajita flower

                  Red =       lotkom plant 

Black and grey =       burnt paddy grains and charcoal  

                White =       ground rice, clay or shells

              Green =       seempata (bean plant)

              Brown =       cowdung  

Here is a sample of what we were shown in Naya:

Rubbing this leaf with your hands makes a powerful terracotta red dye

 

Chinese Whispers/ Telephone & Consequences

To illustrate how meaning transforms through transmission we decided to begin our workshops in the villages with the game Chinese Whispers (or Telephone), a rapid example of the evolution of narratives over time through oral and pictorial storytelling traditions. A group sit in a circle; a nominated person whispers a short phrase in the ear of the person next to them, that person, in turn, repeats what they think they have heard to the person on their left and so on, until the message arrives at the last person in the circle. At this point they say aloud the message they have received. Inevitably this message will have changed meaning considerably. Often, the rhythm and cadence of the resulting phrase bears a resemblance to the original, each person making an approximation of what they have heard.

We also played Consequences.

The rules:

A piece of paper is folded into sections along its width, to create a loose, open fan shape. The first person draws the head of a creature, folding the paper over so that the next person to draw can only see two lines indicating either side of the neck; the next person draws the torso and the last person the legs and feet. In each case the person drawing only has guidelines that help to position their drawing so that the result, when viewed unfolded, fits together as a strange hybrid creature. The body is collectively assembled, but without knowledge of the collaborators actions.

TRIP SCHEMATIC

Written on the 5th April

We arrive in Kolkata early on 5th April, delirious from lack of sleep and mild desynchronosis (or jet lag).  After a brief but effective power nap we go to the Banglanatak Dot Com office to discuss the workshop with the Director, Amitava Bhattacharya. Before the workshop begins in Kolkata on the 12th April we will visit some of the villages in Midnapur where the Patachitra artists participating in the workshop live. Amitava draws us a diagram of our approaching trip illustrating the structure of our itinerary, the distances we will travel and the organisational structure of the towns, districts and blocks in the region.

KEY

Letters are abbreviations for places

P= Pingla

D= Dashpur

C= Chandipur

N= Nanda Kumar 

TRANSFORMATION

Patachitra Artists (West Bengal) and Transit\ion Collective (London) collaborate on TRANSFORMATION, a two week workshop culminating in an exhibition in Kolkata, India. The theme of transformation has been developed in response to a Patachitra scroll painting depicting a mythological story about the Hindu goddess Durga. This story, as with many other Hindu stories, depicts gods in many earthly forms. Transformation and metamorphoses are commonly used narrative devices that twist a plot structure away from the banal and familiar, toward the chimerical and the phantasmagorical. Transformation can be understood as a constant condition, endlessly forcing new artistic strategies in an ever-changing environment.

TRANSMISSION will function as an online project space for the TRANSFORMATION workshop, making visible some of the processes and incidental works produced during the workshop which may otherwise be disregarded in the editing process required for the exhibition. TRANSMISSION will also function as a forum for discussion via the 'comment' option in the blog format.

For more information on the Patachitra artists visit:  
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080529/REVIEW/821524739/-1/ART
http://www.banglanatak.com/new/revivefolkart.asp#10 
http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/naya/scrolls.html

For more information on the Transit\ion Collective and associated artists: 
http://www.nielsstaats.com/
http://www.post-projects.org.uk/

http://www.tractprojects.co.uk/artists.php?name=magda_fabianczyk&id=7&wid=1

http://www.tractprojects.co.uk/artists.php?name=mathilda_fowler&id=3&wid=1