Freedom is a precarious word. Being free is the most essential need for human existence and yet in pseudo democratic society the system imposes enclosures on anyone who identifies as the other. But what about self-imposed enclosures. Between Rousseau’s social contract and the theory of enlightenment there lies a self- imposed, self-censored enclosure, often mistaken as security. In India, the most familiar with such confinement are the women. But the phenomena does indeed reflect with any member of the society who chooses to create these boundaries as on the name of mind their own business - or are they? But when is minding one's own business is deafening  silence , the one that insure that sense of present security ?  Carefully stepping on this broad idea of self-imposed enclosure. I explore a sense of false security and a state of mind that is imprisoned as a result of social conditioning. In this performance, I create an enclosure to interrogate and interrupt our submission to willing confinements.

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The Performance Act

Part: I

A life-size cylindrical enclosure is erected in the middle of the performance space. Concealed within the enclosure were four individuals facing North, South, East, and West. I take my place outside the cylinder and invited two members of the audience to come forward to choose a side (right or left). One’s they have chosen their side, they were asked to deliver three questions with a condition. The leftist is free to deliver three questions of his free will of any subject as long as it did not address any element of the current performance. The right-winger could only deliver questions directly addressing to the current performance.

Two member of the audience wrote their three questions each on a piece of paper stuck each side of the wall.

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Part: II

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Audio joins the performance space. Recorded in my voice the audio plays out a series of narrative and scientific inquiry written in combinations of prose and verses. During the performance , I establish a relationship between the black cylinder in the middle of the room, and three walls surrounding it by placement of  various objects and actions, the fourth wall is the audience minding their own business being the spectacle. I like a bit theatrics - seemingly void cylinder in the middle of the room manifested specific body parts in succession,  First to emerge were a pair of knees  from the north, an elbow from the east, a pointing hand points to the west, and a head emerges from the south. I asked the questions  delivered by the member of the audience to the Knees (left) tapping them with a hammer each time,  there was no answer I painted the pair of knees with blue paint. I took footprint of the feet by dipping them into scarlet Kumkum on transferring the impression on a paper which i hanged on the opposite wall. I repeat the process on the east side of the enclosure where an elbow has emerged, I painted the elbow blue, asked questions, tapped with my hammer - they did not answer.  I made a drawing where two elbows meet a circular point. And stuck this drawing on the opposite wall of the elbow. 

 

To the west where a finger is pointing, I painted it blue, and asked the question. It did not answer.  On the opposite wall, there was installed a circular crocheted form mounted on a board. It will be useful to note that the audio playing in the background were designed resemble the acts in the performance in one way or another.  For example, during the action the audio narrates a scientific study of gestures in apes, specifically pointing behaviors in apes.  I pull a string of yarn out of a crocheted form and tie it down to the pointing finger. I now stick a sheet of paper on the opposite wall next to the crocheted Form. The finger slowly begins to pull the yarn inside the enclosure, an action that was slowly unraveling the crocheted circle, while i was recreating  a drawing of a growing circle in response to the loss of mass.  

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Part III

At south end, a female head emerges from the bottom of the enclosure in the .  I paint the face, I unravel the hair of this female, and add hair extensions , while the audio in the room asks questions, liberty, beauty, and art. Finally, a single question is repeatedly put forward to the head: “How would you contemplate the love of a mother who has gone wild”.

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The mother here is the nation, land, earth.