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ART SHOW

TWO WORLDS The video films juxtapose the East and the West

‘East West Encounters,’ the art video show at the Kashi Art Café in Fort Kochi is presented by three artists- Ansuman Biswas, Umesh Madanahalli and Kiran Subbaiah. The three different videos are the varied perceptions of the artists on the subjects in concern.

The Calcutta born UK artist, Ansuman Biswas, in the video ‘Zero Genie’, focuses on “bridging the gap between art and science,” his work taking art into a level with science (or the other way around).

Beginning with two genies the show projects two men of ancient fables in an almost desperate attempt to display the ambience of mysticism: of flying carpets and floating men. Hilariously (and at certain junctures ridiculously) the individuals in concern are placed in a contained area that resembles an anti-gravitational arena in a space centre with two ‘regular’ individuals trying to place them on the carpet that never flies. The merge of west and east is obvious, a spoof of things in concern today.The second video in black and white, shot slowly and moves from one end of a table to the other . The focus is on eating of food with fingers or cutlery, a

discussion of the pros and cons of using either the fingers or instruments. Both agree or disagree, and at given points both admit being wrong. The video ends with the plates being pushed to the centre of the table: is east better than the west, or vice versa. Perhaps there really is no answer.

A work by artist Kiran Subbaiah titled “When the Mouth is Still Full…”, the work contains detailing and precision only noticed upon close observation.

Kiran is a supporter of copylefts vs copyrights and explains that every work is a celebration of what is realised through it. Moving further, the last video is shot in India. Titled ‘Between Myth and History’ by Umesh Madanahalli, a swami in traditional attire outside a temple gives a proclamation in his ethnic language. The camera moves extremely slowly capturing various details of the surroundings to a young man holding a spirally designed [red, modern] candle in front of Nandi.

His quest begins into a temple and its cavesfinally ending in a street in Europe. It explicates the myth of spiritual yearningfinally be thrown into the modern world. There are no definite answers, no end results. But an endless travel of discovery that has invisible threads linking them. East to the west and west to the east.

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