Drawing : Seeing and listening in time
This series of drawings is about going closer to spaces to observe the contents inside. As an extension of observing parts, these observations lingered longer, perhaps outside the moment to reflect and understand the micro relationships within the observation.
“See with your ears and listen with your eyes”, is an age old instruction for the learners of Indian classical music. As this process of learning is considered lifelong, the interpretation of the complex process proposed through this instruction is also lifelong. I try to decode it in the light of my practice of observation and drawing.
What is seeing?
Seeing is perceiving shapes, forms, colours, lines, relationships and making meaning for self based on prior perceptions of knowledge and background. Seeing is also a biological phenomenon where your eyes work in a particular way, concentrate and give signals to your brain to make sense of what is being seen. Prabhakar Barve, an artist, in his essay titled , ‘Sight’, views seeing as an experience that takes place due to play of light and darkness. Drawing, is a langauge that relies completely the phenomenon of seeing. He further elaborates that a perception can also be totally different from what the object actually is as it depends on the state of mind, frame of reference, imagination, biases, religion etc. This is a meaning we make through the seen and unseen, hence known and unknown. Now, how does one see with the ears?
It is about translating visual seeing into seeing through senses in context of music, through auditory senses. Perhaps it means to develop an ability to see the depths of sound and silences. At some point in my practice I was following the corners and micro spaces of the large space. One could see the textures of leaves making crackling noise and the silences of falling yellow flowers.
What is listening?
Listening is also a perception but the object of perception is not visual. It is auditory- it needs to have qualities that a sound can have. Sound is conventionally invisible. To see something that is invisible, one needs to apply the essence of seeing to the ability of listening. This kind of listen- ing then is a kind of visualisation that generates an understanding in a language that is different from the language of the content- kinaesthetic, non verbal but experiential. It is worth mentioning that this process that appears external, is equally internal where one is seeing with the ears, and listening with the eyes, in the space of mind and body.The act of drawing while observing, contributes to this understanding where conversation, on the level of consciousness takes place between the observer and the observed and between the observer and the observer him/herself.
Feel- Think
The term consciousness overlaps with an anthropologist Unni Wikan’s49 proposal of the term, ‘resonance’. Her work emerges out of her fieldwork as an anthropologist in several countries. In context of the study of another culture, she suggests that it is not as important to understand how people go about their lives as it is to grasp the con- cepts with which they feel and think about their individual existences. Resonance is a fuzzy term, according to Wikan not easily defined in English language, as it is ability to “Feel-think.” The term is based on Menghati, a word in Balinese that she came across while doing field- work in a Balinese Village. The word suggests “feeling-thinking” as a way towards understanding, negating the division between cognitive and intuitive thinking. It further suggests that the only way we can comprehend what others experience is by recognizing its “feel-think” character.
This particular series of drawings that looked inside, also let me look inside me through the moments that felt before they were gone.