The calmness begins in the ground floor where Satish Menon and Shana Susan Ninan sit at a table with their work. Upstairs, a floor above, is a hall, that will double the feeling if you are the kind who relaxes with a little bit of art, music, literature and performances. All of it comes together in a way that only few like Satish and Shana could imagine for this is not a random collection of art works. It is all connected. The connection begins with music. The art is what got made listening to a piece of music. The literature is what got written listening to that same piece. And finally, on Sundays, a performer who had listened to it would enact whatever comes to their mind. Satish and Shana call it ‘Interpreting Resonance’, an exhibition that began at the Ledhi Art Café in Kochi on July 29 and would go on till August 30.
“It begins with Satish making everything a workshop or a programme at his café,” Shana says, complimenting her co-curator. Shana too is a regular at the café, a writer and lecturer she takes part in the literary workshops and book discussions that happen. “So when Mitali Saraf, a pianist musician, told him about her compositions, he thought of an art workshop where someone can paint listening to the composition.” When Shana the writer heard it, she wanted literature too to be there. And then Satish thought of performances with performers like Satyajith Ravindran Rajavarma coming there regularly. The interesting part comes in the way these two curators have planned it. They did not tell the artistes about each other.
So the paintings, literature and performances were all done without knowing who composed the piece of music they were creating their work for. It is not all Mitali’s either. There are four pieces of instrumental music, two of them by her, one by her featuring composer Arun Varghese, and the fourth by Sandeep Gurrupadi. The four compositions were then given to four artists, four writers and four performers. Satish takes you to the top floor and asks someone to play the first piece of music for which artist Vinod Laxman has painted two ‘Supernova’ pictures, writer Sreebala K Menon has written, and Susheela Pai performed on a Sunday.
“They sent a concept note, about resonance and sound and all that. And didn’t disclose who composed or who the other participants are. This gave me an independent mind to freely do what I wanted to,” says Vinod. “I teach in a college and it was then the beginning of a sem break. I listened to the music, which I didn’t know at the time was Mitali’s, and I got the idea the sound that takes us to a different level of the universe. I am a fan of science fiction. So I thought I will title it Supernova – including the explosions and the aftermath. The silence before the big bang and what happens after that. I have put red for explosion. To a lot of people it seemed like blood. But that’s fine too.”
It is Vinod’s mother Saradha who inaugurated the exhibition, another spontaneous thought that came from the curators when he said he was bringing her. After Vinod’s paintings are Anuradha Nalapat’s and the second piece of music by Mitali begins. Rajeev Balakrishnan from Chennai has written a short story in four or five sheets, all framed next to the painting. Smitha M Babu performed for it last Sunday. The third work – Mithali’s featuring Arun Varghese – has paintings by Suresh TR, writing by Bipin Balachandran and performance by Parvathy Menon from Bengaluru.
The last composition, Masab by Sandeep Gurrupadi, has paintings from Alok Johiri, writing by Chandini Santosh and performance by Satyajit, which was held on another Sunday. Says Chandini, “I firmly believe that the salt of one's politics needs to shine across one's writing. It is lost love and it's socio politics that rushed to my mind when l heard the subject. The exact moment that separation happens, but you realise it had happened only much later.” For Satyajit, the music was a canvas onto which he could also project his thoughts. “It was beautiful notes, so deep. As an artist, you could paint, as a writer you could write. What would a performer do to a piece of music that has no words? I decided to call my piece Love Thy Neighbour. There are all kinds of problems, so much of violence is happening. There is blood everywhere. So I did a simple choreography, about realising ourselves, about opening your mind to your neighbour, seeing ourselves in our neighbours. When you say you are your neighbour, you see yourself in him or her,” he says.
And finally the faraway composer speaks on a phone call. “I believe all art are connected. It was really nice to see it materialising and collaborating with all these other people. Sometimes they were scarily similar to my thoughts, and sometimes different. How different people perceived it differently. It had a very deep impact.”
