See-Saw: a series of artistic exchanges
In our continuing engagement with gender and related issues, we are happy to present See-Saw.
Conceived and conceptualised by Karen D’Mello, in collaboration with Sandbox Collective and supported by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, See-Saw brings together 12 Bangalore based creators from diverse backgrounds in an artistic exchange through physical post/mail. Creators will be paired anonymously.
Each week, for 10 weeks, each contributor will be sent a prompt through physical post/courier. These prompts will be triggers to engage with stereotypes, assumptions, prejudices around identity, food, ability, etc. They will respond to the prompt by developing an artistic response.
They will then post/courier this, accompanied by a letter/note talking about the artistic response, to the person they have been anonymously paired with. The note is to enable the anonymously paired partner to understand and engage with the artistic response.
Anonymity is key to the project and will be considered while creating these artistic responses. The hope is that it will displace automatic responses by bracketing identity. Artists will also maintain a reflection of their own process and on the artistic responses received and share it, if they wish to.
Simultaneously, Karen will work with team members Charulatha Dasappa and Suchaita Tennetito to use these artistic responses and notes (with consent) as content, and showcase parts/whole to make a larger comment about prejudices, stereotypes and assumptions. The final form will be a visual representation.
The idea is to go beyond an archival space. And what that is will only emerge as the project moves forward. It is the artistic responses that artists bring to this space, through prompts that are sent to them, that will form the content and form of the interactive website. Some larger arcs to consider would be - moving from individual to collective, think of material inequality/dignity etc.
In addition, she has co-founded the theatre group, KathaSiyah which works primarily with young and emerging artists. The vision of this group is to tell stories from perspectives and narratives that are often not included in the mainstream. She is a fellow of The DO School, Hamburg, is currently studying MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths University, London and received the Charles Wallace India Trust Award.