_ CARTOGRAPHIC CYBERNETICS of the GESTURAL SPACE

The reactionary phase of work led me to consciously situate my project to a TALE OF TWO CITIES.

London – Chennai; contested here tries to find a tactile relationship by involuting Chennai into London’s landscape.

 The term cybernetics stems from the Greek κυβερνήτης (kybernētēs, steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder — the same root as government). Cybernetics is a broad field of study, but the essential goal of cybernetics is to understand and define the functions and processes of systems that have goals and that participate in circular, causal chains that move from action to sensing to comparison with desired goal, and again to action. Studies in cybernetics provide a means for examining the design and function of any system, including social systems such as business management and organizational learning, including for the purpose of making them more efficient and effective.

WHAT ?

The Project uses Gestures and Palimpsests deliberated through movements of a classical Indian performative art – BHARATANATYAM. The intention is to create the necessary flux to establish modes of engaging into a foreign landscape for an ancient Indian art.

WHY ??

Chennai being a British colony in history has lot of British traits and reminiscence. On the other hand Britain hasn’t had much of Indian impact yet. The relational dynamics and differences in art and culture of these two cities are full of potential to be explored.

After reading part of the book, NON REPRESENTATIONAL THEORY by Nigel Thrift; I was consumed by the notion of existing social constructions and precincts of our so called democracy and the lame political order across the globe. The book also illustrates the mutilated and curtailed human aspirations into limelight and the only respite being it’s our own fascination through art, music and dreams or sometimes a parallel world too. Indeed a true sense of freedom, expression, discovery and invention.

It’s my fascination to see the fusion of an Indian art in a new landscape. Bharathanatyam is a classical dance which has Hindu mythological references. It is believed to be the cosmic dance between Shiva and Parvathi (Indian God and Goddess). The dance form is still practiced in southern India with innate details of hand and bodily gestures and predominantly performed by females.

HOW ???

[Relationship – the story for the dance]

The observance of Kumbh Mela dates back many centuries in Ancient India to the Vedic period, where the river festivals first started getting organised. In Hindu mythology, its origin is found in one of the popular creation myths and the Hindu theories on evolution, the Samudra manthan episode (Churning of the ocean of milk), which finds mention in the Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana............   The Bharatanatyam involves

Abhinaya (expression) or Natya - dramatic art of story-telling in Bharatanatyam 

Nritta - pure dance movements, as a medium of visual depiction of rhythms 

Nritya combination of Abhinaya and Nritta  

The western contemporary dance uses Laban Movement Analysis to choreograph. More Interesting techniques are being explored in Synchronous-Objects by William Forsythe, visualizing choreographic structure from dance to data to objects.

The story would be enacted as a metaphor for a cartographer based in London; enabling mapping of cities influenced by an art form. The Latency of foreign performative art form if induced in shaping landforms would be sudden, characterising much more deliberated landscapes for future spaces (cities). The Spatial formations and geographic art renditions of Julie Mehretu are lines of work to be explored upon.

Cartography is an interesting subject by itself, but when interlaced with inducing architectures of foreign references; it makes the cartographer into a cybernetician. The notational representation of my Mother’s Bharatanatyam would be enacted as a language of expression to map dance data to objects in the Gestural Space. The wetness of the project is in the way how it illustrates, art in art; space in space and difference in difference.