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The woman in the trees
The woman in the trees A sound echoed through the forest, but I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Then, suddenly, I saw a nymph moving high up in the oak trees. Surprised, I called out: “What are you doing up there?” She gave me a broad smile and called back: “Je fais…
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Ensemble of limbs
Ensemble of limbs Looking at the legs in unison in last week’s post I remembered this photo that I took once in a shopping mall in Sydney. Then too it had been the configuration of limbs that had incited me to take out my camera. The people spread out in the circle, on the chairs and…
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Legs in unison
Legs in unison The central image in the picture is one of 196 photos, fit in wooden screens, that together formed the installation by Dayanita Singh at the Kochi Biennale 2014. The Exhibition Guide says that the installation “is a year’s work presented as a series of interconnected movements in life and thought (…)”. For the viewer…
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Nostalgic bricks
Nostalgic bricks It is amazing that precisely the work of one of the youngest participants of the Kochi Biennale 2014 evokes memories, images and emotions in me of the Kerala that I know of 40 years ago. Unnikrishnan C, born in 1991 in a family of basket weavers in Kerala, started painting the bricks of…
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Through the looking glass
Through the looking glass Up close: Light-rimmed, dark faces, all similar, each one different. Made by the artist out of paper pulp, rice paper, acrylic and art powder colour. With their wide open mouths they look startled, scared; but – according to the Exhibition Guide – they are initiates singing at their first holy communion.…
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I am eyeye
I am eyeye I like eyeye. It is one of the words coined by Aram Saroyan that were written on walls at the Kochi Biennale. One eye overlapping a second eye, like in the vision through our own pair of eyes which enables us to see the world. I like lighght. To see, we need…
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Global dust
Global dust One of the attractions for me to revisit Kerala after many, many years, was the international modern art biennale in Kochi of which the second edition took place in 2014/15. Another attraction was the International Film Festival of Kerala which, in 2014, was organized already for the 19th time in the State capital. My…
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Spinning progress
Spinning progress Seen from the air, Kerala appears to be inhabited solely by palm trees. People and houses are invisible. Yet there are many millions of them, hidden beneath the green canopy of the palm trees. It is therefore not surprising that processing coconut fibre – the fibrous outer husk of the coconut – into…
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Hier Rust …
Hier Rust … My own connection with Kerala fits in a long tradition. Dutch compatriots have been coming to its coasts as sailors, traders and explorers of the Dutch East India Company since the middle of the 17th century. But they also had a number of military outposts and sort of ruled over the Malabar…
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Kerala revisited
Kerala revisited When I think of Kerala, images from the early years of my life as a filmmaker-anthropologist come to mind. In the 1970s and early 1980s, my connection with India centred on Kerala. Spread over numerous visits, I spent at least a year there, if not longer. And although I have been back to…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
