When Ramkinkar was asked whether he privileged sculpture or painting, he said “I ride two horses at the same time”. He rode a third horse as well and this was performance — theatre and song — which he loved with equal passion. The project, 409 Ramkinkars, proposed the aesthetics of installation as a prompt for theatre. And the other way around — theatre as a prompt to conceive an installation.
Just as site specific installations take from architecture the plan and structure of objects in space, theatre is present within installation practice as a performative mis-enscène. The positioning of sculptural forms, the presence of the (spectator’s) body within an immersive ambience; these and many other attributes make installation art and theatre twinned genres.
I proposed to my colleagues in theatre, Anuradha Kapur and Santanu Bose, that Ramkinkar’s third horse be set off on a new journey — and on a road that takes unexpected turns. Or that his boat (another of Ramkinkar’s metaphors) be set afloat on choppy waters. Even as Ramkinkar tested a wide range of linguistic approaches to evolve his modernist practice — often shifting between figurative and abstract bodies — he found support in the Santiniketan ethos. This enabled him to make monumental outdoor sculptures in the space of the university which itself became a performative act with public value. Recognising this, we felt that Ramkinkar’s acuity, his practice as well as his renowned charisma, would do very well within the genre of what is called promenade, or immersive, theatre. At the IGNCA, we used the wide frame of the architecturally diverse buildings and the large garden-compound for this purpose.
This story is from the July - December 2016 edition of TAKE on art.
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This story is from the July - December 2016 edition of TAKE on art.
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