7.83Hz Bound - Shraddha Borawake

7.83 Hz Bound

Lens Based Installation

Initiated under the Photosphere Grant Exhibited at the Panchatattva: The Road Ahead Exhibition 1st to 31st December 2016 At the India Habitat Center, New Delhi

In Collaboration with Ruby Jhunjhunwala Curated by Dr Alka Pande

The writing below shares processes, translation, representation, documentation and expansion of the lens based project 7.83Hz Bound. And how it has lead me to my upcoming project.

In the following expanse of papyrus and digital ink, I would like to share my position of a vernacular translator of my own work, made before and during the Piet Zwart.

Steeped in multiplicity – considered noise – a lack of order, the vernacular is chaos. It has numerous streams of thought and dimension. Forever in motion, shifting the focus between multiplications found in space, as the senses deem it matter. I, explore this, AND the vast expanse of time axis that captures a moment, when the two met, simultaneously, separate, yet in relation to one another.

Through my photography I texture linear musings. And further in the lens-based practice, I skew it back to dissolution. Thus touching upon a very personal understanding of consciousness and cosmic awareness found in the Indian mythic rhetoric; and consequently applying it as a medium.

Earth is Benevolent. She cradles our sentient experience through senses and mass, material and mutation.

Vibrating at the frequency of 7.83 Hz with Love and Innovation, a giga-grand mother.

Daugther of Ravi. (Sun-male) Once, a ball of fire, setting on a journey born out of a blazing womb transforming through the Five Elements like a Kavi. (Poet – Gender Neutral)

Sister of many moons she locked onto the orbit of eclipse. As winds of time cooled her skin

the Earth sprouted
life within.

And suddenly she secreted Sustenance through Her acquiescence.

Encased within the sky, Akash, heaven, the Fifth dimension Life she holds everything down to hearth. molten Gravity Magnitude Latitude Longitude and Servitude.

Transcending processes over and over and over again through mass, matter, migrations and humanity She Bleeds

Fire as resurrection Winds in the fabric of Time Earth as The Mother to suckle Water, a life force that resonates and Ether as technological creativity.

Beginning and ending with the Five elements a micro and macro symbolic textural exploration of all the particles at play grounded on and through a delicate string that is; Benevolent Mother Earth.

Artist Statement

This vernacular narrative stands as a public art, lens-based installation. It addresses the ongoing flux of the Anthropocene that is ; Man vs nature, natural vs artifact and nature of the artifact; as well as, nature of man’s actions in this textural exploration. Throughout the narrative of this conceptual artwork is an entwined trilogy of the highly constructed, to naturally occurring and the discarded.

A mythical symbolic journey which, weaves together the appearances, of the dynamic five elements, manifesting, in, on and within the planet; as well as our social fabric. The sculptural medium anchor the mythic façade of sleek reflective imagery to the ground reality of human development through stories in fired clay and the use of mundane objects.

Created for the public sphere, the work speaks through the representation of utilitarian tropes referencing the iconic Indian phrase Roti, Kapada, aur Makaan (Food, Clothing, and Shelter) – a commonality found in the survival of the human race across the globe.

The main narrative thread of elucidates the flux, between thoughtful, symbiotic, down-to-earth rural systems of lifestyle in India. And the contemporary destructive modern post-colonial and post global market economy driven consumerism, as grounds for comparative study as evident decay of time.

Constraining these opposites into one frame, serves for poetic rhetoric found in jugaad. Using photography and ceramic to remember a culture that is still slipping away, as an immersive experience of a new language, a confident vernacular.

Lens Based Process

March - May 2016 Photography The first step…

Receiving the photography grant, gave me an opportunity to fall in love with the medium again. At this juncture in my life, my practice as photographer had taken a back seat, owing to the urgencies I was attending to in Pune. These were, grassroots activism, socially engaged practice, collaboration and dialogical work and a lot of administrative tasks for the same. Thus, wandering with the camera, reconnected me to my independent artistic core.

I started by addressing the urban landscape of Pune, as a canvas of scrutiny, informed by the urgencies of sustainability, ecology, and health within lens of relational politics in society, drawn from my experiences in the field of humanitarian work. The images captured the contradiction between rural and urban traces in the socio-economic range of lifestyles and modes of functioning within the metropolis.

The evident migrations of rural dwellers into the urban habitat provided a visual study for contrasting cultural economy of means, distribution of resources and imposed transgressions of, city as a dream and a means of survival. Here, Ayurveda and Pachabhoota helped me to connect the body to the cosmic.

The images were crafted keeping the elements in mind. How were people addressing the ideas of housing, food, clean water and using technology to aid particular lifestyle within various measures of class? What conversions, inversions and threads mirrored the cosmic and sentient? Ayurvedic tied into astrological sciences helped me inform my photographic choices.

Every façade shadowed the resonance of a distinct element. I categorized the subjects through creating associations, to enable an abstract narrative of the forces, at play, focusing on nature, earth, Gaia, and human condition.

June – August 2016 Ceramic Process : Beyond the two-dimensional gridlock of photography

At this juncture, I had recently completed 4 years of collaboration with senior ceramic artist Ruby Jhunjhunwala. Thus, I was drawn, yet again to ceramic processes, and invited Ruby to join me in this project. Because, the Ceramic medium manifest the five elements in its inherent form; Earth as mud, water to transform it into clay, fire to transform the raw sculpture into solid material, and wind to dry the finished object. Lastly, the hands that channel the divinity found in ether, a creative force that gives shape to all the actions of creation in the artistic process. It was this transformative nature of the medium, which allowed for a relational, dialogical poetic of mass, matter and imagery.

I was adamant on exploring complex connections to elucidate the depth of research and knowledge that the Vedic sources offered. One was remnants of earth’s cosmic, planetary identity and on the other hand, the corporeal identity of the planet as our main source for all energy & material. The intricacies of flux between earth process and human intervention were evident in the texture of urban landscape. I wanted to re-create these signifiers, and stack them as impressions, upon impressions through conceptual sculptures. And I was confident that Ruby would respond to the depth that I was seeking in these impressions.

The photographic process being distinct from the ceramic. The images set a stage for Ruby to respond to. This time, our collaboration for this project was different from our past seamless modes of sharing authorship. In this structured format, I invited her into the realm of photography to supplement and compliment the image-based expression, with her sculptures.

December 2016 Collaboration : Politics of co-creation as a legitimate place in the heart of art

As a small artist from a city with an under-developed art industry, bringing a local voice that had its own process, ethics and narrative to New Delhi found form as - co-creation. The political act of expanding my voice and authorship beyond individual ownership of expression was a strong part of participating as a lens-based artist in the public sphere at an exhibition of high caliber. Although, I was diluting the pure photographic expression, into an installation; challenging classifications, I was speaking the vernacular unapologetically. By taking my small town community ethics to the big city to test on what ground it would be accepted or critiqued.

Addressing central vs periphery processes Ruby and I at that time sustaining our local meaningful art practices, isolated from the main opportunities through our collaboration. Ruby, plays a highly traditional role at home, balancing family as well as her art-practice. Our sorority and support to help each other’s expression grow through collaboration was a powerful feminine gesture, which we wished to share with the institution. The ceramics made in her studio surrounded by her team, children, trees, animals, and even an occasional snake, resonated the inclusion of the voice of Gaia and Grandmother.

Research: Returning to India’s Mythic Past

The main research topic of the Five Elements was anchored by the ancient knowledge of Panchatattva. The sources ranged from texts by Robert Svoboda, sermons by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, writings of Ecologist Satish Kumar, the archive of Times of India – Speaking Tree section, oral discussions spiritual seekers as well as drawing embodied knowledge from my very own reminiscing cosmic biology.

Staying true to the inherited knowledge system, that being employing conscious awareness towards reading the signifiers; I was decoding every square inch of earth’s surface, urban, rural, natural and unnatural with a keen eye. The natural textures of time, the hidden process of wind, the invisible stories of water, the traces of human hand, the complexities of intervention of the imagination, the chronicles of dreams, the decay of the past, the fluxus of migration, the archive of the past, the anomalies of the present, traces of ghosts and spirits, wounds of history and tropes of victory.

The ancient Vedic form of thought and knowledge empowered the work to draw complex symbiotic connections as my inquiry expanded to cover a vast span of deep time when addressing the elements. Looking at earth as a planetary object, distinct from human history, allowed the expression to evolve out of the binary of rural vs urban, natural vs artificial and discrete vs continuous. It offered a continued stream of vibrational resonance of an inclusive vernacular form.

Furthermore, I wanted to situate this highly ethnic knowledge system in a contemporary language. In an attempt to break out of binaries of identity tied to Eastern or Western thought; one being Mystical and the other being objective or scientific. The meta-physical world helped me bridge this language gap. Here, through concepts based in gravity as the ultimate leveler. I came across notions of magnetism, resonance, healing vibrations, Ley lines, nodes and medians found in the earth that are capable of communicating cosmic information about existentialism.

Tipsy Vernacular Revelations of the Other when in search of the Mother

This ultimately lead me to the discovery of the ‘Healing Industry’, the Western spiritual rhetoric, New Age philosophies, community of modern day #witchesofinstagram, the occult dialogs of Madam Blavatsky, Cybernetics and web as a form of collective consciousness as well as the language which, has emerged in the recent past to accommodate a need for human beings to Ascend above and out of the violence of capitalism and over-individualized society. It is in this imbalance, that I take my upcoming work further. Bringing authentic knowledge of the Veda’s and other Indian ancient sciences through translation, sublimation and crystallization of New Age healing techniques in combination with deep, realized, authentic spiritual tropes of knowledge as a medium for upcoming art form.

“So you know that the entire world is made up of the Five Great Elements; you do know the Five Elements?” …. These Great Elements are not elements in the chemical sense that hydrogen and helium are elements; they are rather states of matter. The Earth Element predominates in everything that is solid in the universe, the Water Element in that which is liquid, and the Air Element in gases. The Ether Element is the space in which things occur, and the Fire Element is the force which changes solid to liquid to gas and vice versa. Everything in the manifested universe, including the human being, is made up of these Five Elements. “As long as you are alive, your consciousness is limited by the vessel in which it is kept: the body, and since the body is made of the Five Elements your consciousness is limited by those very Elements. Knowing that your consciousness is limited is all well and good, but what are you going to do about it? You don’t want to remain limited, do you?” – Words of Vilamananda, Aghora 2 Kundalini