It's All About The Experience

So how is it that a blind man can dream?

It’s a very interesting question, is it not?

It is the question that opens the debate once we’ve finished preparing ourselves for another incredibly enlightening Tuesday class.

A blind man’s dreams depends on the stage at which blindness hits him. If he was blinded at a later stage, what he sees in his dreams is limited to what he has already seen. His image never develops further. So if he was blinded when he was ten, he would continue to see things from a ten-year-old’s perspective, with things looming above him.

If he was born blind, however, he would dream through his other senses. His hearing, his smell, his touch – it would be an experience. And that is exactly what we, with all five senses intact, forget to do.

Experience.

Our facilitator talked of a campaign in Ahmedabad where they took a few blind men on a walk through a very renowned heritage site, and the normalcy with which they described things, in complete contrast to how we would rather laud it’s amazing architecture and diverse cultural significance, is what strikes me. The sad thing is that the moment we are given eyes, he says, we immediately forget to see.

The world, he says, is not made for everybody. It’s only made for those seventeen to twenty-five year olds, those healthy bodies, those quick minds. And not just for them in total, but more for the men than anything. You can’t see an old man crossing the road within the span of two minutes, can you? Nor can you see a little child climbing a flight of stairs, not especially with steps so huge.

Contemporary art is not made for the viewing pleasure of a blind man. That is where it falls short. But performance art rises to the occasion where contemporary art does not.

Today’s class was to be about performance art, and all that it entailed.

What an interesting topic, no?

Very, I should think.

But yes. Performance art.

Today, he says, you’re going to be doing a piece of performance art of your own. Make groups of two or three, and come up with a concept. You are to enact it out during lunchtime.

Ye gads, I think.

This was not going to be good for my minor fear of large crowds.

But okay, it’s all about stepping out of your comfort zone, is it not?

So I, along with Tushar Pant and Anukool Raman, look at each other, exchange a contemplating look, decide, and then crowd around my amazing beaten-up Mac to begin the wonderful process of brainstorming.

And finally, after a few uncomprehendingly half-witted plans that we immediately dismiss as utter rubbish, we come up with a fascinating concept that we're finally half-satisfied with.

Lies.

Or rather, how one lie builds up to a second and a third and a fourth and so on until you’re covered in layers and layers of lies that weigh you down and cover you up, before you finally decide to give up and break free.

You lie until you’re smothered and then you can’t take it anymore, you just have to shed your baggage.

We couldn’t not do it; it was too damn good to pass on.

All three of us would be included in the performance. One would sit in the middle, doing absolutely nothing. The two others would be his conscience, before and after. The before conscience (me), would stand to his left and then begin to wear clothing after clothing, layer after layer, until she was completely covered from head to toe, before she sat down to the side and weighed her head down. And then, the after conscience would rise, and shed clothing after clothing. Layers would fall off until he’s left only in a T shirt and shorts, free from his lies, free from his inhibitions. Following this, he would settle down again, and thus would be our cue to depart.

Lunchtime was an interesting experience.

I’ve not really risen in front of an audience all that often before (my stage fright does tend to cause a few problems sometimes). To stand in the middle of the basement and put up a spectacle is not something I’ve ever done before, nor something I ever even expected to do. Not ever.

But let me tell you, there was a change.

In my thoughts, in my perspective.

I don’t know how to explain it, but it was the experience that brought about the change, and that is exactly what needed to happen – I needed to experience, and learn from the experience.

Performance art is all about the experience.

It was so incredibly invigorating.

Later that day, we were exposed to different works by various other performance artists like Marina Abramovic, Dada and even Lady Gaga with her meat suit.

It was so enlightening, really – the lengths to which the audience goes, the lengths to which they are willing to go to when it comes to something they have the power to mold, to disfigure, to change. Every single performance conducted by my fellow course mates ended completely differently than how it was expected to have ended, especially considering the reactions of the watching audience. Even ours, it was considered more a theatrical performance than a performance artwork. Some others, they were treated like games, while some, they were taken to have meant something completely different. In a way, a performance art is made by what the audience makes it, yes, but it is quite mind-boggling when you actually experience it with yourself as the artist in this case. You don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

It’s all in their hands.

It was another stimulating class with another stimulating exercise. I don’t even know what to expect from next Tuesday now, this is totally baffling.

One thing’s for sure – I’m definitely not going to get bored.

Until then, I suppose.

I bid you good day.