Title: LOSS OF BROWN

Date: 2021

Medium: Poster

Artist: Sujit Mallik

Exhibition: Blue Sky Gardening, 2021

From press release:

Sujit Mallik, LOSS OF BROWN and the potent GRAY. is a project proposal for the urban rooftop owners.

The artist (Sujit Mallik) through a series of interconnected performances conducted at various rooftop farms wishes to discuss everyday conversations on ecology, land art, trees, eating habits, food safety and possibilities in ecological living.

The artist sees the human participants and non-human beings such as trees, birds, insects and vegetables as collaborators of this project, which will trigger even a small fracture in our current urban centric living and humanist condition - where man has been alienated from other species in this earth.

The project seeks to identify and re-experience the soil as an important force in our lives.

These experiences can drive deeper into the ground on the rooftop.

The first stage of the performance aims to engage with the self in their current predicament through the act of digging/building in a soil pot for themselves. The pot can take shape up to ones size of the rooftop, inside a balcony or can be a construct of one’s imagination. Inside the pot the perspective of the ground is altered and become the site for performance between the different elements engaged in the process. From within these soil holes on the concrete bed, the participants engage in dialogue with each other and explore their own sites through a magnifying glass.

The second stage will explore the act of living in the other’s home or living with non humans.

The project seeks to occupy divergent spaces for duration of 10 days and to re-experience the soil as an important force in our lives. The participants will engage in a conversation provoked by the notion to occupy, a positionality that verifies human existence and action. The conversation will therefore examine a post human world imagined from the hole/space participants assume. Participants will be encouraged to introduce human and non human beings that will explore the horizon of their occupied space and time.
The conversation will become an episodic podcast, developed from the conversations with selected Themes/provocations for daily conversation will be developed collectively.

All of us will come live. Time will be decided later.  

I do not expect everyone to follow the performance guidelines as it is, but would rather enjoy hearing your own modus operandi in conducting these acts. The Act therefore would be coming together of interested participants, including myself, in different locations to dig/create a soil hole at least six feet long. All participants will begin the act on the day they want to start and engage with their hole for 21 days of the incubation period. After incubation actants will sit inside their individual holes for a few hours communicating with other artists virtually and describing their confinements to the other actants. The performance is aimed at creating a discourse on life and soil. Only the minimum length of the hole is fixed, and actants can choose to change other dimensions, keeping in mind that the soil pot has to accommodate them.

Below are a few items that actants would need for the Act;

1. A small patch/parcel of rooftop/land where you can install a six feet reclaimed land. 

Note: The actant can choose to find a spot that is secluded or in the middle of another activity. Though it will be ideal to create conversations with passersby about the soil hole, it is left to the discretion of the actant in choosing to do so.

2. Tools for digging and removing soil.

Note: Actants can employ any manner in making the hole and can, therefore, choose any tool. Actants can also choose to develop their own unique tool for this task. These objects will be used in any future shows involving this project.

3. Magnifying glass

Note: With a minimum magnification power of 10x, the magnifying glass will be used in exploring the soil and the walls of the hole. Actants are expected to document images found through the magnifying glass.

4. Camera / Smart Phone 

Note: Artists are encouraged to create audio and visual documentation of the process, the soil, and the six feet deep hole.

5. Internet Connection

Note: For communicating (video and audio calls) with fellow actants.

Note- everyone please send me some images for the promotional material.

1-The tools you are going to use for digging

2-space where you want to dig

Best regards     Sujit Mallik

Instagram:

@saagwala