Films, installations reinforce spirit of biennale

Rajula Shah’s documentary Beyond the Wheel to be screened on Friday; Swiss artist Bob Gramsma’s installation ‘riff off OI#16238’ lays bare a story of grit

February 09, 2017 10:27 pm | Updated February 10, 2017 07:41 am IST

Swiss artist Bob Gramsma’s installation titled ‘riff off OI#16238’ at Aspinwall House.

Swiss artist Bob Gramsma’s installation titled ‘riff off OI#16238’ at Aspinwall House.

Kochi: Rajula Shah’s 59-minute documentary Beyond the Wheel that takes a look at three women in Indian pottery, with a look at the taboo that bars women potters from the potter’s wheel, will be screened at the biennale pavilion at Cabral Yard as part of the Artists’ Cinema package curated by editor Beena Paul on Friday evening.

This will be followed by the screening of Panthibhojanam directed by Sreebala K. Menon, which draws on different ideas of food, food shared among friends, food that is untouchable for one caste, while it remains a delicacy for another and the like.

The package, Indian Cinema: A Female Narrative, got under way on Thursday with the screening of the critically-acclaimed feature film, Parched , directed by Leena Yadav.

“I believe women tell stories differently – shaped by both psychological make-up and social conditioning. Many women baulk at being pigeonholed as ‘women film-makers’. What is different in works by women is how the narratives vary. Unfortunately, this uniqueness is very under-represented in Indian cinema,” said Ms. Paul.

Muziris as commentary in Swiss art installation

Swiss artist Bob Gramsma has his installation at Aspinwall House titled, ‘riff off OI#16238’. The term, borrowed from music, means, “to improvise on a recognisable, established piece”. The artist’s setting up of the site-specific work was nothing short of operatic.

The first act, of excavating earth from the site, likened to “borrowing both the soil and the compressed culture”, was always going to be difficult. Drawing line markers let him see what and how big it could be, but Gramsma said: “Once you start digging, you lose control and the picture of the sculpture because you go into the hollowness of the form.”

The history Gramsma was particularly interested in digging up and building over with his “hyper-local” work was the lost port town of Muziris, to which Kochi shares an umbilical connection. Into the vacuum of absent earth, he intended to put in a steel-reinforced concrete cast. More than 110 tonnes of wet concrete was mixed and rolled, wooden planks were lined up against the cavity to prevent slippage and the palm trees at the site pulled apart to bring in the mixer.

“Everything was settled, and the hole was finished, and everybody was prepared. The moment we started pouring in the concrete, the sky opened up and water started falling into the hole. But by that point, we could not afford to stop even though the machine pouring in the concrete was blocked-up several times. The plans did not account for this,” Gramsma said.

The incessant evening storm threatened to flood his sculpture, like Muziris. Then, “something happened” as a small army worked all night under the cover of a stretched tarpaulin – to protect both themselves and the concrete from the pelting rain – and saw the job through. The third act involved using the concrete slab’s own weight to lift it up from the cavity and positioning it at a roughly 170-180 degree angle to the site as a sculptural mirror image of its previous resting place in the void below. The intent was to make the installation a commentary on the various forces and state of flux inherent to all spaces over time.

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