Site specific art belongs to all

Sanchayan Ghosh, an associate professor at Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan spoke about ‘Site Specific Art’ at the Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFAU), Masab Tank recently. Taking the topic ‘Critical Multiplicity-study as a collective social engagement’, Sanchayan spoke about the changing times which make one observe changing landscape and art in nature and surroundings around us.

Sanchayan commented: “I have always been deeply influenced by the ‘Third Theatre’ concept of Badal Sarkar wherein most of the activity is interactive and participatory. It’s all about sharing space and even the seating is circular and there is an attempt to bring people together and build an environment of learning from each other. This concept when applied to art, results in making art a collective process. It’s about generating a body of work around us. There is commonness of space.”

“In the year 2007, with the help of Gobbet Society, we worked on a project to find out the state of all trees that were planted in Visva Bharati University over a period of last 80 years. It was about tracing all documents to find out where the trees were planted and make a visit to the place. There were many interesting experiences. Many a time, we did not find the tree and we kept a ‘missing’ placard at the place. Sometimes, we could not reach certain points without jumping over newly constructed walls,” he added.

Sanchayan stated that he has also done a project abroad titled ‘Doosra - The Other Maze’. “For this project, I used Shola wood as the material and created white roses out of it. The idea to use this material was to depict something from our area which has survived today despite industrialisation. Then there has been the project of collecting soil samples from different regions including Birbhum district which was one of the focal points of agitation against the British Raj.

‘Aakil Aarsi’ was a workshop based on community art activity on bamboo leaf paper with the Santhal tribal community. ‘Merge’E’Merge 1’ was a 10-year long interactive project with final year students of Kala Bhavana, in Santiniketan tracing the thought process of youth in transition from academics to a professional career. The ultimate concept of art is about not being my or your zone. It's people’s zone and the viewers are never passive. He participates in the process and goes through the experience,” Sanchayan concluded.

By Jaywant Naidu