RADHA GOMATY ON HER WORKS The Drift & Circle
" I recall my father holding me up flat on the sea when I was a little girl of maybe 4 or 5 years. Once I felt him gently withdrawing his supportive hands leaving me comfortably afloat…Since then I love to drift.
Water has always been a natural element to me - as Sea, besides which I grew up from infancy to adulthood, and as River, brief memories of a few summer vacations at my father's natal home by the River Meenachil.
I was faced with an accumulated real life crises in 2007, The 'Drift' as a performance video later sprouted from a spontaneous rite of surrender, a sort of 'ending', that I performed for my own self laying my body adrift on the currents of the slow moving Ganga at Kashi with a sense of deep disavowal, an utter sense of letting-go that I direly needed...
A short while into the drift , and they arrived- The crows used to feasting on human carrion that's part of the flotsam & jetsam of the holy River.
I could see them, beautiful, circle like something out of MC Escher, form a funnel like spiral and I could almost feel the brush of the strong wing of the lowest flying crow upon my face…
Looking at her so up close ,belly first I realised that I never knew that Black was all at once so many colors… The blackest amongst the blacks of a crow's body however are her inky shiny sharply intelligent eyes. Her right eye met my still living one for a second, I could literally see her expression change as she turned her neck skywards and cawed her "Abort Mission!" command. In a trice the formation scattered and once more, just the silence… Breath, Heartbeat, the River's laplap and indistinct murmurs…
By the time I landed on an itinerant island , one of the many that begins to form around summer literally ringed with the flame-like flowers of the marigold plants that had sprouted on their own from the garlands gone adrift from the corpses, I had fallen deeply silent…
It is this that stayed with me when I repeated this act as a performance for a video in 2010 as a preparatory for 'River, Body, Legend', an IGNCA art project by three women artists based on their experiences traveling down the Ganga from source to sea.
What I liked best at the end of it during the shooting is the fact that this time the crows did not come. They sure know the difference between a body that is actually relinquishing itself and one that is channelising the flows of Desire into Art.
CIRCLE came as a sudden vision in 2013 that I immediately sat and drew just as it was arriving. That way it was born as poems often are… Presenting head or a limb or even a rump first ...and their complete shape only once they are fully out.
A filmmaker in Delhi, who liked the DRIFT so much when he saw it at Maatighar, IGNCA in a month long show of 'River Body Legend' there in March 2012 that he said while giving me a business card :
"Any more crazy ideas like this, just let me know. Will be happy to work with you on them!"
We became friends.
What's interesting is when I sent him the storyboard scribbles, he said "Do you know I have a venue that's EXACTLY like what you have described?!"
The photos he sent proved to be that this is a poem indeed with a life all its own. It simply realised itself.
The premise of the CIRCLE is definitely close to Life. I've often looked at the means of 'insult'... Unless there is actual physical pain inflicted what's being hurt usually is our socially posited sense of selfhood…
It's like I think an old Naseeruddin Hodja story where he visits another country, culturally very different from his own and ends up doing something that is construed as an offence. Then he comes back to say to his friends that he had a really hilarious and enjoyable time:
"It's just wonderful you know! They have this strange way of welcoming guests by getting together and applying some black make up on your face and giving a ride all around town on a fine donkey with everyone lining up to see you making strange cheering sounds!... And the best part is it's all free! Really! On the house! Imagine!!!"
This is in a lighter vein.
I carry in myself the resistance of Mahasweta Devi's Dopdi Mejhen, an Adivasi woman who is gang raped in a police station- Bleeding , bitten, torn she gets to her feet. Refusing to wear her clothes , she , in defiantly owning her ravagement , rejects the hypocritical value that's invested by patriarchy in the so-called modesty of the naked female body. If you destroy the basis of humiliation which has been invested in your self through socio cultural conditioning , by disinvesting , rejecting disowning, then who can 'shame' you? Make you abhor yourself for actions whose perps need to carry the burden of and not you??
Similarly beware of all cultures that heap disproportionate praise on you ,deify you excessively celebrate any aspect of your social identity , like your marital status, your motherhood (esp. of sons) for example ,with special signifiers. It's not YOU who are valued but the signifiers. When the condition that supports them ends , be sure that you will be deflated , devalued and junked too.
The same culture that says that 'Where women are revered ,the gods themselves are happy' does not hesitate in the very next breath to declare you 'a sexually depraved , dangerous, impure and filthy creature by nature who needs to be controlled by one male after the other in your family to be considered not dangerous and socially useful.'
The woman in CIRCLE is immovable, self immersed, impervious and stubbornly indifferent to the processes of the deification that always leads to it's contrary, desecration, in a never-ending loop.
During the shoot, an interesting thing happened in the rotten tomato pelting scene by the all male crew. What started off a little gingerly, considerately began to key up naturally to an offensive violent pitch that I could feel with every tomato first tossed , then thrown and later hurled hard at my body. The men admitted to me later, shocked, that in that short time they realised what was happening to them.. They were drawn into a mesmeric spiral of escalating violence when, as a mob ,they were faced with an isolated and defenseless body…
PS:
Right now while loading this video, we encountered a problem on YouTube. CIRCLE has been marked as suitable only for viewers above 18 only. This is my quickly scribbled text asking for a review:
"This is an art performance video, similiar to an acting out of a sequence without any intent to self harm. None of the materials used are actually harmful or corrosive or in anyway dangerous to the body. I will be so glad if you removed this restriction because of the philosophical premise behind it that is so useful to people of all ages , especially in my country now, with its rising tide of intolerance and misogyny.. Thank you!"
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