Remember To Breathe

An explorative pursuit that seeks to survey internal resonances of an itinerant mind; by using still images in a fluid manner, I have sought to create layered visuals that speak of penetrating surface realities. The short film is an attempt to link the creative cycle to the breathing process and thus, understand it as a living, regenerative experience. While questions flicker in the subliminal horizon, the mundane is rendered a tactile consciousness.

Thoughts embedded in the discursive imagination are agents of infinite possibility, it is when they are given a tangible birth that a stable identity becomes manifest. Yet this work seeks to convey the rupture in each articulation by addressing dualities that are inherent in the expressed images.

Visual Artist, Paul Klee once said, "We must stop and listen for a response to the world in ourselves. This means becoming intimate with objects, reaching a stage... where we can wait attentively and silently until the essence of their being is revealed."

When seen through a phenomenological lens, this endeavour seeks to comment on the act of critiquing. It acknowledges the repetitive nature of visual analysis involving the drain-ing of the mental realm to translate thought into propositional modes of meaning-making.

An Address to the Unknowable...

My writings throughout this residency have emerged as notes in the margin, rather than elaborate essays. It seems contrived to formulate a fixed piece of writing based on a lived process that is still a continuing quest of sorts. This 4-week journey have raised critical questions for each of us; while some have transformed into purposeful voyages acquiring visual dimensions; others continue to float and unfold in the subterranean niches of mindscapes. Though the experiential spirit is not something that can be pinned down to a document; it is through the terrain of visual language, reflective ponderings and socio-cultural environment that ephemeral currents may be explored.

The experience of being in the midst of creative activity and contributing to the unleashing of energy and ideas has been extraordinary; as over time the coming together of a varied set of young art practitioners led to the building of a unique dialogical space that generated freedom for self-cultivation within an ambience of collective enquiry. Working outside the academic realm has allowed resident artists to challenge normative standards of art-making by crossing disciplinary thresholds, thereby expanding their oeuvre of artistic expression.

While viewing art-works as showcased end-products, what we might miss out on is the layered nature of creative endeavours: process-based cycles, the pulse of imbibed logic and the flow of intuitive subjectivities. Participating in this residency has enabled me to witness artistic impulses oscillating between the meditative to the frenetic, and to significantly engage with covert in-betweens, like filtration of thoughts, construction of forms and distillation of intent. Often such vital steps appear as unknowable realities in the garb of interiorized characters that may not be seens but strongly felt. And hence, these words may be nothing beyond corporeal deposits of intensely felt momentum.