Artistic research in the online format –

Short dialogues, chat formats, extended conversations, long sustaining yet short dialogues opened out in space and time. Group conversations and individual one on one conversations flow into each other. Covid-19 imposed restrictions on us in terms of meeting each other, and talking in real spaces. But the virtual world opened up new ways of connecting and strangely offered a way to play hide and seek. We could hide behind videos, we could choose not to share our vulnerable bodies, and only our voices. We can talk in ways that seem intangible across time and space. We can hold long conversations together without the disturbances of classroom structures. We miss being in physical spaces, but the virtual has afforded other possibilities, ways of meaning-making and building presence. It has been hard work, building this strange language for a virtual world of conversations… but I feel connected to my students as they do to me and we have had fun along the way. Also smileys, gifs and all the convenient symbols from the world of chats make our conversations lighter, gentler and more fun.

I see the unfolding of the chats through four lenses.

1. Artistic openness as performance

I interact with them in real time as the painting evolves. In a sense, I am performing the art in front of them. What I hope for is transfer of feelings, emotions, and creative spirit as I am experiencing it at the moment when I am painting. This has long been considered a way of learning in tradition.

The porous transfer of knowledge and learning from the teacher to the receptive student, the process is intentional, a gift and receiving of it, a mutual process, akin to breathing.

2. Body as archive

Trained as a bharatanatyam (Classical Indian Dance form) for over 15 years, my body is a site of my felt, intuited and cultural memories.

IAIDP as a program is conceptualized in the idea of embodied practice, where the experience of the body and its intelligence is integral to the stories we tell. I re-enact a past performace through my will. I allow my memories to flow, along with it the moments of porosity I have experienced at the waterfall. Each day, I seek to liberate my body from its colonization, and re-learning to experience the natural world.  Tuning into the wistful and quirky presence of the coucal or the agile one of the dancing frog, the very presence of the waterfall in its seamless weaving of time, are also the poetic ways of the culture I grew up in. Beautifully documented in Sangam poetry from the Tamil, southern Indian region,  this embodied landscape language is flowing through my veins. But I have to work hard to re-open the channels in my body. As I draw and paint, I open up this body as archive as a way of decolonizing pedagogy, inviting my students to rediscover their own bodies through embodied practices.

3. Relational Eco-Creativity

Relationship with the natural world through aesthetic perception is key to my own work in ecosophy. Drawing upon the intrinsic and interwoven relationships human beings share with the natural world, forgotten in our urban cultures, but very much alive in smaller pockets across the country as I travel, and in the long history and philosophy of Indian thought tradition, ritual and artistic practices, I want to enchant my students with how much there is to feel and experience and connect back with the natural world. As I speak of the intimate experiences I share with waterfall, coucal and dancing frog, I invite them to my world, to an aesthetic perception and a way of relating with the natural world, through one’s own creativity. I also invite them to share their experiences in the natural world, find words for all that they have never articulated. I hope this will eventually allow the creative primordial spirit to entwine with them, though the intricate veins and roots of the natural world, that if one were to breath or step on the earth, we would be instantly embraced in. Creativity becomes effortless in some ways when this connection happens. This eco-creativity lies at the heart of my pedagogy. I want to take them away from tools and techniques into the heart of being alive to everything around them, to find themselves in bird wing and tree root, moneky tail and flowing river.

4. Redefining Creativity, requestioning measurement

In my art, the modern Indian artist’s questions on what is Indian in contemporary Indian art continues to be a quest. I have been drawn by the line of the traditional Indian artist, used by indigenous tribal, folk as well as artists considered to be drawing in the classical style. The line is the essence of life capturing the subtle being of all that is drawn. Traditional Indian philosophy and aesthetics define the spirit of my work. And in this approach, creativity is not measured just by the quality of work, but the quality of consciousness that the artist has traversed. It is about the stillness of the mind, and self-reflective quietude that the artist arrives at through contemplation. While we are bound by certain criteria for formal academic measurement, which has also been consistently questioned at our college, as a collective, I ask them to question what we will measure, what we will perceive in our own arts and ourselves. This is essential for the utopia of our classroom. If we cannot free ourselves from the western standards of measuring creativity, we cannot unblock our own intuitions. The huge fear of judgement that comes from these standards of measurement  needs to be dealt with before we can break open the doors to our cultural intuitions and creative processes. And our work in building community comes from this shared looking at our own fears and pondering about them together. As I paint with them, it is this notion of creativity juxtaposing it with my fears that I make visible. My intention is to be inclusive, to draw them in to the necessities and boundaries of technique and form, while letting themselves go in the evocative power of art to release fear and build community together , where are no judgements of class, caste, creed, experience or skill. Only when we define creativity on our own terms, will we find the language of the art and the versatility and openness to the forms that seek us and those that we seek.

Our inquiry into our past, into our intuitions and cultures does not mean we deny Western models or ideas, creative impressions or inspirations for we have been groomed in them. But it means we seek to be thoughtful and alert to what makes us who we are and what we don’t know or remember about ourselves. Perhaps as time passes by we will blend all the cultures that we are exposed to in a multitude of ways that are meaningful, but for now, the intention is to seek ourselves in all the darkness of our individual and collective pasts, while holding on to the remarkable light of unhindered creativity.

Language

Language is at the heart of my work in pedagogy. The language of the subtle self, our interiorities and the landscapes we unfold within ourselves. All of these conversations with my students are a pondering with them to see how they can articulate their own interiority. One can debate whether written and oral language are important as forms of expression and why we cannot just express ourselves in tacit, visual, gestures or a hundred other silent languages. However there is a distance to be bridged between our inner and outer selves, our public and private world, and the most ancient of our thoughts with our most contemporary ones. And if we cannot craft our language, to be able to articulate ourselves, we are lost without the bridges that we need.

This cohort of students has been warm and gentle, I wonder if I can be so open with others too and how long these trust building and culture building exercises will take. I don’t have answers yet, and herein lies the vulnerability and ephemerality of this journey.

In Part 2, our documentation of the chats, which records the evolution of the painting are made visible.

In Part 3, student reflections on this particular process, as well as their thoughts about practice, pondering about their own creativity are recorded in their own words.

In Part 4, which, summarizes and concludes this exposition, teaching/ pedagogy is framed within the philosophy of being.